Remember When You Had to Pay Tolls on the William H. Natcher and Audubon Parkways in Kentucky?

When I was a kid, we used to travel south on the William H. Natcher Parkway to get to some my favorite childhood destinations. One was Beech Bend in Bowling Green. The other was Opryland in Nashville. See, the 'Natcher' connected to I-65 in Bowling Green and, if you hopped on 65 South, you could be at Opryland, right off the Briley Parkway in Nashville, in about an hour.

Of course, the Natcher at that time, like it was until the mid 2000s, was a toll road. There was a toll at the Hartford/Beaver Dam exit. There was a second at the Morgantown exit. The third was just as you entered the series of Bowling Green exits. I don't remember the exact order of the tolls, but I know the total cost of driving the length of the Natcher was $1.50 and the tolls were divided into 60-cent, 50-cent and 40-cent increments.

As kids, my sisters and I used to fight over who got to throw the money in the toll.

I remember finally getting the chance to do it. I completely missed the toll.  Yes, I was that kid. I accidentally threw the change onto the ground. My parents NEVER let me live that down. If you've ever been asked, "What's the one thing you did as a kid that no one ever let your forget?"  For me, that was it! That dreaded toll both incident in the late 1970s.

Those tolls were in place for decades. However, on November 22nd of 2006, they were finally removed. If you remember, there was a Kentucky state law that required tolls to end when enough money was collected to pay off the construction bonds. According to a 2019 KentuckyToday story, the Natcher and the Audubon, both of which had a point of origin in Owensboro, were "the last two toll roads among the state's nine parkways."

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That same day, that pesky toll booth was also removed from the Audubon Parkway, which connects Owensboro and Henderson. Though I never had an unfortunate toll incident on that particular parkway, I certainly remember the tolls there too.

Our friends Eyewitness News were there the day that Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher visited the Audubon and the Natcher to share and celebrate the good news!