Shunpiking is the act of deliberately avoiding roads that require payment of a fee or toll to travel on them, usually by traveling on alternative "free" roads which bypass the toll road. The term comes from the word shun, meaning "to avoid", and pike, a term referring to turnpikes, which is another name for toll roads. People who often avoid toll roads sometimes call themselves shunpikers. Historically, certain paths around tollbooths came to be so well known they were called "shun-pikes".
Shunpiking has also come to mean an avoidance of major highways (regardless of tolls) in preference for bucolic and scenic interludes along lightly traveled country roads.
Early shunpikes
Shunpikes were known in the United States soon after independence. In the mid-1700s, Samuel Rice built a road over the Hoosac Range in northwestern Massachusetts, near the present Hoosac Tunnel. Subsequently, a nearby road for stagecoaches was built around 1787, which became subject to control of the Turnpike Association incorporated in 1797. People desiring to avoid the turnpike fees took the Rice Road instead of the stage road, and so the Rice Road earned the sobriquet “shunpike”.
Contributing to open free travel, in 1797 the thrifty travelers of the Mohawk Trail forded the Deerfield River rather than pay toll at the turnpike bridge; in 1810 they won the battle for free travel on all Massachusetts roads.
A shunpike in Morris County, New Jersey, dates back to 1804; one near Mount Holly, Vermont, was in existence at least as early as 1809; and one in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, was created circa 1810.
A newspaper article in the New Jersey Journal of March 6, 1804 (p. 4), references a house for sale on Shunpike Road between Morristown and Elizabethtown (Elizabeth), New Jersey. This "Shunpike Road", parts of which are still extant, was in existence the same year that the turnpike it was used to avoid, the Morris Turnpike, was opened for business: 1804. It ran southwest of and parallel to the Morris Turnpike, now called "Old Turnpike Road". It was formed by the improvement and connection of sideroads to enable country people to avoid the expenses of the tolls. Shunpike Road ran through the towns of Bottle Hill (now Madison), Chatham, Summit and Springfield.
When the Hampton Falls Turnpike was built in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, around 1810 by the Hampton Causeway Turnpike Corporation, a toll was charged to cross it at the Taylor River. "Not content with the payment of a toll, some of the residents got together and built a slight bridge called the 'Shunpike' across the Taylor's River, some distance west of the Turnpike bridge, where travelers and teamsters could cross without charge. This continued on until April 12, 1826, when the toll on the Turnpike was discontinued and has remained a free road to this day."
Historical boycott in Virginia
An example of shunpiking as a form of boycott occurred at the James River Bridge in eastern Virginia, United States. After years of lower than anticipated revenues on the narrow, privately funded structure built in 1928, the Commonwealth of Virginia finally purchased the facility in 1949. However, rather than announcing a long-expected decrease in tolls, the state officials increased the rates in 1955 without visibly improving the roadway, with the notable exception of building a new toll plaza.
The increased toll rates incensed the public and business users alike. In a well-publicized example of shunpiking, Joseph W. Luter Jr., head of Smithfield Packing Company (the producer of Smithfield Hams), ordered his truck drivers to take different routes and cross smaller and cheaper bridges. Despite the boycott by Luter and others, tolls continued for 20 more years. They were finally removed from the old bridge in 1975 when construction began on a toll-free replacement structure.
United States
Connecticut
Prior to the removal of tolls in 1985, the Connecticut Turnpike had eight mainline toll barriers instead of a ticket system that was typically used on the turnpikes of that era. While the Connecticut Turnpike was officially considered a toll road for its entire 129-mile length, the placement of mainline toll barriers and the lack of ramp tolls meant the only sections of the Turnpike that were truly tolled were between the interchanges immediately before and following each mainline barrier. Consequentially, motorists familiar with the local area around each of the toll barriers could essentially travel the Turnpike toll-free by exiting before the toll plaza, use local streets to bypass the toll, and re-enter the Turnpike past the toll plaza.