Built in the late 1930s, the Merritt Parkway was designed for beauty as well as efficient travel through southern Connecticut, with landscape architect Weld T. Chase creating a restful park-like setting, head engineer Earl Wood helping shape the road, and George Dunkelberger adding 68 unique bridges along the 37.5-mile route and designing the tollbooth plazas. The first tollbooth plaza opened in Greenwich in 1940 after Connecticut decided to use toll revenue on the parkway, and eventually three plazas were built at Greenwich, Milford, and Wallingford. In 1940, gas cost 20 cents a gallon, the toll was 10 cents, and the speed limit was 35 mph, and the 70-mile trip from Stratford to New York City took about two hours, a considerable improvement over the five-hour journey on the Post Road. Designed in a rustic, cabin-like style with logs and simple green wooden parts to blend with the environment, the toll plazas remained in use until Connecticut ended all tolls in June 1988, after which Friends of Boothe Park, Inc. saved the Milford toll booth plaza and moved and restored it at Boothe Memorial Park and Museum, which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.