Yep, for a significant period of American History, a good bit of long-distance travel was over privately constructed and managed turnpikes. Their financing was

Yep, for a significant period of American History, a good bit of long-distance travel was over privately constructed and managed turnpikes. Their financing was very much in the Kickstarter model: "American turnpikes were stock-financed corporations seemingly organized to pay dividends, though acting within narrow limits determined by the charter. [F]or the American turnpikes the hope of dividends was merely a faint hope, and never a legal obligation. Odd as it sounds, the stock-financed "business" corporation was better suited to operating the project as a civic enterprise, paying out returns in use and esteem rather than cash." http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/Klein.Majewski.Turnpikes http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/Klein.Majewski.Turnpikes