Shunpiking
deliberately traveling on alternative "free" roads to avoid toll roads that require payment
Shunpiking is the act of deliberately avoiding roads that require payment of a fee or toll to travel on them, usually by traveling on alternative "free" roads which bypass the toll road. The term comes from the word shun, meaning "to avoid", and pike, a term referring to turnpikes, which is another name for toll roads. People who often avoid toll roads sometimes call themselves shunpikers. Historically, certain paths around tollbooths came to be so well known they were called "shun-pikes".
Shunpiking has also come to mean an avoidance of major highways (regardless of tolls) in preference for bucolic and scenic interludes along lightly traveled country roads.
Early shunpikes
Shunpikes were known in the United States soon after independence. In the mid-1700s, Samuel Rice built a road over the Hoosac Range in northwestern Massachusetts, near the present Hoosac Tunnel. Subsequently, a nearby road for stagecoaches was built around 1787, which became subject to control of the Turnpike Association incorporated in 1797. People desiring to avoid the turnpike fees took the Rice Road instead of the stage road, and so the Rice Road earned the sobriquet “shunpike”.
Contributing to open free travel, in 1797 the thrifty travelers of the Mohawk Trail forded the Deerfield River rather than pay toll at the turnpike bridge; in 1810 they won the battle for free travel on all Massachusetts roads.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shunpiking” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.