Main Street once formed part of the old Boston Post Road, first used by colonists in 1673 to carry mail between New York and Boston along Native American paths. The road was part of the network known as King's Highway, which eventually extended to South Carolina and connected the Colonies before and during the Revolutionary War. In the 1760s, Benjamin Franklin, then Joint Postmaster General for the British Crown in North America, ordered milestones placed along the Boston Post Road to mark the most direct route to Boston and is said to have measured the road himself with an odometer strapped to his carriage wheel. One of Franklin's granite milestones still survives on East Main Street, 33 miles from Boston.
