Snickersville Turnpike
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| Snickersville Turnpike | |
| Route information | |
| Length: | 15.00 mi (24.14 km) (the old turnpike continued about 3 mi (5 km) from the north end) |
| Major junctions | |
| South end: |
 US 50 at Aldie
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| North end: |
 SR 7 at Bluemont
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| Highway system | |
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Hibbs Bridge
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| Location | SR 734 6 mi NW of Aldie between Hibbs Bridge Rd (SR 731 W) to the S and Watermill Rd (SR 731 E) to the N, Mountville vicinity, Virginia |
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| NRHP reference # | 11000067 |
| Added to NRHP | March 1, 2011 |
The Snicker's Gap Turnpike was a turnpike road in the northern part of the U.S. state of Virginia. Part of it is now maintained as State Route 7, a primary state highway, but the road between Aldie and Bluemont (formerly Snickerville) in Loudoun County, via Mountville, Philomont, and Airmont, is a rural Virginia Byway known as Snickersville Turnpike (State Route 734), and includes the about 180-year-old Hibbs Bridge over Beaverdam Creek (a tributary of Goose Creek). This turnpike replaced, in part, the first toll road in the United States, which consisted of two roads from Alexandria northwest into the Shenandoah Mountains.
In the late 18th century, there were two roads over the Shenandoah Mountains between Alexandria and Winchester, crossing the Shenandoahs at Snickers Gap (now along State Route 7) and Keyes Gap (State Route 9). The Virginia General Assembly, in 1785, passed a law appointing nine commissioners (a non-profit turnpike trust) and instructing them "to erect, or cause to be set up and erected, one or more gates or turnpikes across the roads, or any of them, leading into the town of Alexandria from Snigger's [Snickers] and Vesta's [Keyes] Gaps". This was not the first law authorizing a toll road in the United States, but was the first recorded turnpike in operation, opening by the end of 1786. Thomas Jefferson, who was at least a moral backer of the enterprise, pronounced it a success. A 1793 for sale advertisement referred to one of the two roads as "the Turnpike Road, down which all the wheat, from an extensive and fertile Country, intended for the Alexandria Market, is conveyed".
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