One of the most innovative aids to the transport of goods in the early pioneer days between Watertown and Milwaukee was a wooden highway called the Plank Road, which roughly conforms to U.S. Highway 16 today. Started in the late 1840s, the road was finished as far as Watertown in 1853. Shipping goods before its invention often took weeks at a time, but after the road was completed, the time was reduced to a matter of days. Known as the Milwaukee Plank Road in Watertown and the Watertown Plank Road as it left Milwaukee, the road came into Watertown by way of what is today Oconomowoc Avenue, then turned onto Concord Avenue and Main Street. Originally a toll road, it was abandoned with the arrival of the railroad in 1855, then gradually taken apart and its logs discarded. The last toll house in Watertown, which stood along Oconomowoc Avenue, was torn down in 1999.