According to the South Carolina Encyclopedia, as edited by Walter Edgar in 2006, Russia was the first country to build plank roads, Canada experimented in plank roads as early as 1836, and plank roads "enjoyed a brief popularity in the early 1850s" in South Carolina, but most were out of business by the end of the American Civil War.

Plank roads were built of pine and oak sills, six (6) to eight (8) inches thick, placed on a well-drained roadbed, then covered cross-wise with planks typically eight (8) inches wide and three (3) inches thick. The planks were subsequently covered with gravel or sand, which ultimately hardened into a fairly smooth surface. But... maintenance was constant and fairly expensive.

Between 1849 and 1853, the South Carolina General Assembly chartered ten (10) plank road companies in the State. The Legislature soon permitted plank road companies to bypass the General Assembly and to receive their charters directly from the governor and the secretary of state, using one of the first general incorporation Acts passed in the State. The longest plank road constructed in South Carolina was the first plank road incorporated, and it ran from Hamburg to Edgefield, approximately twenty-six (26) miles.