The early means of transportation on land, in the colonies, was by horseback, for either persons or property, and this was the universal method of travel until nearly the beginning of the 19th century. It was a common custom for the post rider to also act as a squire of dames, and sometimes he would have in charge four or six women travelling on horseback from one town to another. It was to the north that the carriage came first, and in the early days only the very wealthy families had them. And with the coming of the carriage, the colonists realized that they needed something better than an Indian trail or bridle path, and the agitation for good roads had its birth. One can form some idea of what the so-called roads must have been in 1704, when we read that the mail from Philadelphia to New York "is now a week behind and not yet com'd in." The mail after 1673 was carried by horseback between New York and Boston, but as late as 1730, the postmaster was advertising for applications from persons who desired to perform the _foot_ post to Albany that winter. The route was largely up the Hudson river on skates. In 1788 it took four days for mail to go through from New York to Boston in good weather--in winter much longer.
The commerce between the settlements on the coast and those in southwestern Pennsylvania and western Virginia was carried on by pack horse. The people in these districts sent their peltry and furs by pack horse to the coast and there exchanged them for such articles as they needed in their homes and for work upon their farms. Several families would form an association, a master-driver would be chosen and the caravan move on its slow way to the settlement east of the mountains. Afterwards this pack horse system was continued by common carrier organizations.
The earliest legislation in reference to highways was in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639, providing for supervisors, and the relaying of the roads so as to be more convenient for travel, with authority to "lay out the highways where they may be most convenient, notwithstanding any man's property, or any corne ground, so as it occasion not the pulling down of any man's house, or laying open any garden or orchard." The law in force in Pennsylvania, prior to the grant to Penn was part of the system established for the New York Colony in 1664. In 1700 a revision of existing road laws was made, giving control of county roads to county officials, but the king's highway and public roads to be controlled by governor and council.