10 That Changed America

(upbeat music) -

Interviewer

Parts of the Post Road still exist. -

Eric

Of course. -

Interviewer

They're called the Post Road, the Boston Post Road. You've got the Post Road, you've got US 1, you've got the old Post Road in places you really still see a lot of these towns maintaining their loyalty and their appreciation of that historical route. -

Interviewer

As colonists moved inland and settled along this route, they built communal gathering places that still remain today. They plant down on the road the first thing you do as a colonial town is you create a Meeting House. The Meeting House is basically the church. This is kind of the communal focal point of any colonial town. This is the gathering point. You also have the taverns. Because there was so much traffic around the tavern, because so many people came in, they talked about what they knew, they shared greetings, they shared news. It became the logical place for a Post Office to emerge, because that's really where the news collected. -

Interviewer

Travelers heading out of Boston along the Post Road, might have encountered this stone that presented them with two options. -

Eric

If you follow the Parting Stone west from Boston, you end up in Springfield, Massachusetts and you find yourself eventually at New Haven. So if you follow the Parting Stone south, you would end up in Providence then that's where you would go along the coast of the Long Island Sound and you would still end up in New Haven. Both of those routes met in New Haven and they would continue on to New York. -

Interviewer

Today this spot aids travelers in a different way. It's now the site of an auto repair shop. What do you think about that? (laughs) I mean that's perfect symbolism really for what would come later on and the fact that it's still there. That's a wonderful thing. -

Interviewer

This milestone is one of many that still stand along the Boston Post Road. These markers helped weary travelers know how far they were from the next town. So you see these mile markers so you would know when you could spot a tavern in a town so that you could stop for the night. -

Interviewer

On this historic stretch of the Boston Post Road in Rye, New York, you'll find the site where one of America's founders grew up. So John Jay was one of the three founding fathers, including Adams and Franklin, who helped end the Revolutionary War. John Jay grew up in Rye along the Boston Post Road and from here he went to Columbia, which was then called King's College. He actually asked his parents for a horse so that he could ride back and forth between Rye and New York on the Boston Post Road. -

Interviewer

Here at John Jay's house, archeologists have found evidence of the first travelers along what would become the Boston Post Road. Native Americans were frequently going up and down this trail. This particular point is probably about 4,000 to 5,000 years old. It's interesting to think that if this point was also found in this area, that maybe there was a trail here going back in time at least four, five thousand or more years. -

Interviewer

Today people still travel along the Boston Post Road, but it's easy for modern commuters to overlook the historic remnants that surround them. To them it's just a road. Some people kind of understand that the history goes all the way back before the country itself had emerged.