At Muskego Centre stood an original tollgate on the Janesville Plank Road, one of 16 privately owned toll roads authorized by the Wisconsin Territorial legislature in 1848. The road was intended to follow a sixty-five mile route from the City of Milwaukee by way of Big Bend to East Troy and then to the Village of Janesville, while also connecting with other plank roads in Wisconsin. It was built on the 1838 Janesville Territorial Road, which followed an Indian trail from the rice marshes of Milwaukee southwestward to Janesville. The legislature set maximum toll rates, allowing tollgates and collections whenever five miles were finished, with charges of two cents a mile for vehicles drawn by two animals, one cent a mile for each additional animal, three cents a mile for every score of sheep or swine, and four cents a mile for every score of cattle. Farmers commonly drove animals to market, while people going to a required military parade, a funeral, or any religious meeting on Sunday were exempt from tolls. Plank roads cut travel time in half compared with the unimproved trails of the day, many of which became impassable in spring, but by 1854 only 24 miles of this road had been completed, from near Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee to Mukwonago. Tollgates stood at Forest Home Cemetery, Hales Corners, and Muskego Centre, where the road intersected the Waterford Plank Road. High maintenance costs, the rotting of the wood within five years, and lower-than-expected profits weakened the road, and the coming of railroads in the 1860s began the end of this and other plank roads in Wisconsin. As plank roads were abandoned, they reverted to local municipalities for maintenance and upgrading, and Janesville Road still serves the public much as it was intended to do more than 160 years ago.