Built between 1851 and 1853, the Boydton and Petersburg Plank Road was the first all-weather route connecting Southside Virginia’s tobacco and wheat farms with the market. Pine and oak planks, 8 feet long, 1 foot wide, and 3-4 inches thick, were laid across paralleled beams slanting toward a ditch. The road boosted crop revenues 30 to 100 percent. Along the approximately 73 miles, there were 7 toll houses and keepers. Stagecoaches traveled the 73 miles Monday through Saturday, stopping every 11 miles for food and fresh teams. Condemned by 1860 as a victim of heat, rainfall, humidity, and clay, it nonetheless provided an important route for troop movements during the Civil War. Another continuous hard-surface link did not exist until the 1930s. Parts of some highways, including U.S. 1, follow the old roadbed, and Petersburg still has a thoroughfare called Boydton Plank Road. A ten mile extension to the Roanoke River at Clarksville was completed in 1856.