Over the "Genesee Pike" traveled tens of thousands of settlers, some staying to take up land in the Genesee Country, others going on to Ohio and Michigan. More importantly, agricultural produce could now reach the Albany market, bringing cash and a greater promise of prosperity to the Genesee farmer.

Turnpikes and side roads alike were dirt, made as level as possible by removing stumps and stones, and by plowing, scraping and filling. In the rainy spring, the roads were muddy and barely passable; in the hot summer, they were dusty and heavy with sand; in the wet times of the fall, rutted and muddy. The best season to travel was when there was enough snow to use sleds and sleighs. Large and sturdy bobsleds carried massive loads of freight over the frozen and snow-covered roads.

Maintenance of the toll roads was the responsibility of their proprietors. Originally, public highways were constructed by the land companies to encourage settlement, agents for the companies offering settlers land in exchange for work on the roads. Later, when the roads were taken over by the state, they were maintained by laborers hired with road tax money or by farmers who preferred to work out their road tax with labor.

The Rochester and Hemlock Lake Plank Road Company, organized in 1850, ran one of many plank roads in the Genesee Country. The 23-mile roadway enabled teamsters to draw heavy loads of timber to the sawmills and lumber yards in Rochester. However, the plank surfaces did not hold up long under the heavy wear from the iron tires of the wagon wheels, the iron horse shoes, and the decay from the weather, and they soon required repair and rebuilding. Most plank roads were abandoned by the end of the Civil War period.

The c.1850 Toll House at the threshold of the Genesee Country Village was the southernmost of the two Rochester and Hemlock Lake Plank Road Company tollhouses that flanked the village of Lima in Livingston County. The tollkeeper, his wife, three children and a boarder shared its two rooms, kitchen and loft