PIKE COUNTY, Mo. — There once were plenty of splinters on an iconic American highway that runs through the twin Pike counties.

Imagine traversing Highway 54 between Louisiana and Bowling Green on wooden planks two-and-a-half inches thick and eight-and-a-half feet wide.

That’s the way people hit the road 170 years ago. It may have been cumbersome, but it sure beat the dust and mud of the old dirt path.

The Plank Road Movement generated immense enthusiasm in the 1850s, and Pike County was one of the places that got caught up in the excitement.

The county already was an economic powerhouse because of boat traffic along the Mississippi River, and saw improved highways — along with a burgeoning rail system — as a chance to exploit inland commerce.

The Louisiana and Middletown Plank Road Company was incorporated in 1851. In April of that year, a public meeting was held to plot the route and come up with a way to pay for it. Stock and bond sales provided financing.

Construction between Louisiana and Bowling Green began the following year, with the goal to proceed through Ashley to Middletown. Sources disagree on how things went. The contractor reported completing 17 miles in two years. Another account says it took seven years just to finish 11 miles.

Regardless, all agreed expenses were greater than expected and that the oak planks wore out too easily due to traffic and flooding. Tolls helped make the road an economic success at first, but by 1868 repair fees caused abandonment of the leg from Bowling Green to Ashley.

With similar fates, plank road efforts were made between Louisiana and Frankford and Louisiana and Prairieville near what is now Eolia. Gravel eventually was used to replace the planks and the companies that built them were sold.

Missourians approved a constitutional amendment in November 1900 that allowed counties to levy taxes for building roads, bridges and culverts. The state first began paving Highway 54 in sections starting around 1928, with completion in the 1930s.

The highway, which once started in Chicago, today extends almost 1,200 miles from just outside of Griggsville, Illinois, to El Paso, Texas.