Apost road is a road designated for the transportation of postal mail. In past centuries, only major towns had a post house and the roads used by post ridersormail coaches to carry mail among them were particularly important ones or, due to the special attention given them, became so. In various centuries and countries, post road became more or less equivalent to main road, royal road, or highway. The 20th century spread of postal service blurred the distinction.
Antwerp-Venice Post Road, similar to the Dutch Post Road.
Bremen-Hamburg Post Road, approved by the king of Sweden on July 5, 1665 to establish regular mail service. A second route was routed from Cuxhaven through the Land of Wursten to Lehe.
Two notable post roads built in the late 1700s and early 1800s were Dundas Road (The Governor's Road) and Kingston Road (Lakeshore Road or York Road) to provide a route for mail and stagecoaches between key settlements in Upper Canada.[2]
The latter route, which became The Provincial Highway in 1917 (Ontario Highway 2 c. 1923), and the former which became a Dundas Highway in 1920 (Ontario Highway 5 in 1925), were the beginning of the provincial highway system in Ontario.[citation needed]
In what was to later become the United States, post roads developed as the primary method of communicating information across and between the colonies.[citation needed]
^ abStory, Justice Joseph (1833). "Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7". Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. Vol. 3:§§ 1119–42, 1144–45. Boston: University of Chicago Press. Retrieved October 28, 2008.
