Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. A plank road or puncheon is a dirt path or road covered with a series of planks, similar to the wooden sidewalks one would see in a Western movie. Plank roads were wildly popular in Ontario, the U.S. Northeast and U.S. Midwest in the first half of the 19th century. They were often built by turnpike companies. In the late 1840s plank roads led to an investment boom and subsequent bust. The very first plank road was built in North Syracuse, New York in order to transport salt and other goods. The plank road boom was like many early technologies, promising to transform the way people lived and worked, and led to permissive changes in legislation seeking to spur development, speculative investment by private individuals, etc. Ultimately the technology failed to live up to its promise and millions of dollars in investments evaporated almost overnight.