Pembroke Street was one of several parallel roads laid out when the town was planned between 1730 and 1736. The original large lots along this wide thoroughfare were subdivided into smaller lots for dwellings, meeting houses for Congregationalists and Presbyterians, taverns, stores, schoolhouses, and Pembroke's earliest cemetery, making the street a linear village by 1755. After 1804, it became an extension toward Concord of the Chester Turnpike, a privately built 19-mile toll road connecting Chester and Pembroke. Clean water was essential to the health of horses, particularly on heavily traveled roads and in extreme weather. A state statute of 1858 authorized towns to reimburse private citizens who provided and maintained watering troughs for travelers' horses. In 1884, Pembroke provided good drinking water for man and beast at public expense, purchasing a trough from the C. A. Bailey Granite Company in Allenstown for $124 and adding a bronze drinking fountain for human refreshment.