Although roads were poor and travel was difficult they were essential to life in Bucks County and their care was a vital concern of local government organizations.  Petitions for the organization of townships invariably stated the necessity of maintaining passable roads as a principal motive for erecting a local government.  Farmers taking their grain to the mill for grinding or carrying their produce to market in Philadelphia, worshippers going to their church or meetinghouse for services, and the elected representatives of the county traveling to Philadelphia for meetings of the Provincial Assembly, all required that the roads of the county be conveniently laid out and properly maintained.

In November 1686 the Provincial Council ordered that one of the first roads in Bucks County be laid out. The road from Philadelphia to the Falls was ordered to be laid out in the most commodious fashion. Thereafter the Council periodically issued orders for its maintenance and improvement. One such order issued in August of 1689 stated that it should be laid out as a “Cart Road” suitable for wagons.

Known later as the Bristol Pike or U.S. route 13 the road followed a former Indian path that ran parallel to the Delaware River from the site of Philadelphia passing through Bristol to just below the Falls of the Delaware at Morrisville where it crossed the river and continued across New Jersey.  Another branch of the road crossed the river at Bristol, passed through Burlington and continued along the river on the New Jersey side to Elizabethtown.

In addition to the Bristol Pike, another “King’s Road” from the Falls to Southampton crossed the county by a more northerly route.  Beginning at the Falls Ferry, it crossed through Falls Township to the village of Fallsington, where it passed by the Falls Meeting House, and continued through Oxford Valley and Langhorne crossed the Neshaminy Creek to Feasterville.

This road is mentioned in the deed for the Falls Meeting House in 1690.  In September 1691 the county grand jury presented the necessity to clear the road from the Falls to Southampton and to repair the bridges on it. On August 29, 1693, the Provincial Council ordered that a road be laid out to continue this route from Southampton to Philadelphia.