For the past several years, a great deal of debate has taken place when the state legislature introduced bills proposing electronic tolls on various major highways in Connecticut.

Although many may believe that the highway tolls, used to offset the costs related to the labor, and materials to build and repair roads, are something new, transportation related fees and levies can be traced back to early history in New London and Groton.

In the mid-1650s, a few years after the British settled the Pequot Plantation in southeastern Connecticut, including what is now New London (then called “Nameeug”), many settlers established residences and farms on both the west and east sides of the Thames River (then referred to as the “Great River” or “Pequod”). Dependable transportation for people, materials and animals across the river became such an important matter that the leaders of the plantation granted a 50-year lease to Cary Latham to establish and provide a ferry boat service to cross the river. The lease authorized charging fees for providing the service.

Initially the ferry service, consisting of dugout canoes and flat bottom scows, operated between a wharf on the east side of the river, in the vicinity of where the Avery-Copp House Museum is presently located in Groton and a wharf at Winthrop’s Neck in New London, just south of the area where the Thames River railroad bridge is now located. The fees charged at the time were 3 pence per passenger, 6 pence for a single horse, and 3 pence for each calf or pig.

The ferry lease contained language authorizing Latham to “keep” (believed to mean sell) “some provisions and some strong liquors or wine for refreshments of passengers.” The lease also explicitly stated that no other Englishman or Indian could operate and charge for ferry service near Latham’s and if they did so, Latham could require that they pay him the fees that they had charged.

Ferry services between New London and Groton continued for another 270 years. Over those years, the cost of the purchasing, operating and maintaining newer and larger steam operated ferries, as well as providing larger wharf facilities, resulted in increasing, proportionately, the fees and levies charged for ferry services.

In 1919, the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad built a new railroad bridge across the Thames River to replace the one that had become inadequate to accommodate larger and heavier locomotives. Faced with the enormous cost of removing the old span, the railroad proposed gifting it to the State of Connecticut to convert into a vehicle (and trolley) highway bridge.

The total cost of converting the structure and purchasing land and constructing new approach highways to the bridge was placed at $450,000.

Several proposals were discussed to finance the conversion project including 1, the State bearing the entire cost; 2, the towns of New London and Groton and the railroad splitting the cost evenly; or 3, establishing a 20-year toll system on the bridge. The third option was adopted unanimously, and the state legislature authorized the projected expenditures for the vehicle bridge project.

The fees established for crossing the new highway bridge were 5 cents for pedestrians and vehicle passengers; 25 cents for one-seated autos, small trucks and two-horse vehicles; and 35 cents for large trucks and four-horse vehicles. Interestingly there was also a charge of 3 cents for individual sheep or swine (I gather some famers would herd their animals across the bridge).

From the time of its establishment, the charging of tolls on the Thames River bridge was resisted and objected to by a large portion of residents in the area. They considered the tolls to be an unfair method of taxation and a financial burden for those who needed to travel between New London and Groton for employment, shopping and recreation.

In March 1923, the state Legislature passed a bill abolishing the tolls on all state bridges, effective at midnight on Dec. 31, 1923. It was signed into law by Governor Templeton in April 1923.

The saga of bridge tolls in the area does not end here.

Beginning in the late 1930s, the number of vehicles crossing the old bridge on a yearly basis averaged over 5 million. The two-lane bridge could no longer effectively handle the large amount of traffic, and delays crossing the river became commonplace.

There had been a large increase in employment and activities at the Electric Boat Company and the U.S. Submarine Base, and traffic congestion on the bridge was raising major concerns by the state and federal governments.

In 1939, the state approved funding, through bonding, in the amount of $6 million to build a new four-lane replacement bridge across the river. Reimbursement for the bonds was to be paid from tolls to be collected from vehicles and pedestrians crossing the bridge.

The new highway bridge, ultimately named the Gold Star Memorial Bridge, opened to traffic in November 1943 and the established tolls for using this bridge included: 15 cents for two-axle automobiles, motorcycles, four-wheel trucks or horse-drawn vehicles; 80 cents for four-axle tractor-trailers and buses; and 2 cents for pedestrians and bicycles. Discount ticket books, containing 100 tickets at a cost of $6, were also available for automobiles with one passenger, bringing the single trip cost down to 6 cents. It should be noted that a few years after the bridge opened, the charge for automobiles and horse drawn vehicles was reduced to 10 cents.

It had originally been estimated that the costs to pay for the bridge, through the collection of tolls, would take until 1971; however, due to a larger than expected amount of traffic using the bridge, payment was expected to be completed by April 1963. Because of this, the tolls were removed from the bridge and tolls discontinued beginning April 1, 1963.

Highway tolls continued to be collected on the Connecticut Turnpike (I-95) and the Merritt and Wilbur Cross Parkways until December 1985. Revenues lost with the closure of the toll booths throughout Connecticut were partially replaced with new and additional taxes including those on the purchase of gasoline.

It can almost be guaranteed that the proposed establishment of electronic tolls on Connecticut highways will be hotly debated, just as the ferry, bridge and highway levies and tolls were contested in the past. New London and Groton are no stranger to this subject.

Jim Streeter is the historian for the town of Groton.