Almanac When I Damn Well Feel Like It-Tom Jefferson Gives Nod to First National Highway, Sort Of
Laborers on the National Road laboriously crushed and sized stone by hand before spreading it to make a firm surface circa 1825-30.
On March 29, 1806 President Thomas Jefferson authorized the construction of the Cumberland Road, later known as the National Road to connect the Potomac River to the Ohio River. Jefferson, the son of a frontier surveyor, always had his eye on the west and the settlement of the Old Northwest Territory had been a special interest since his plan for organizing the area on regular-sized, mostly square townships was incorporated in the Land Act of 1785. He envisioned the vast area, as well as Kentucky and Tennessee south of the Ohio, as the cradle of his dreamed of agrarian democracy where yeomen landowners would virtuously counterbalance both the commercial and mercantile interests of the Northeast and the plantation elite of the Old South.
Despite land hunger in the east, getting West with the necessary tools, equipment, livestock and provisions to begin a new life was a daunting task due in no small measure the rugged mountains that stood between the navigable eastern rivers and the Ohio drainage. Years of bloody Indian warfare on both sides of the Ohio, further dissuaded settlers even after Kentucky and Tennessee were admitted to the union in 1792 and 1796 respectfully. After Mad Anthony Wayne defeated the British backed Shawnee at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, a tense peace was established. Jay’s Treaty in 1794 eased tensions with the British over borders. In the Treaty of Greenville in 1796, several tribes including the Shawnee, Wyandot, Chippewa, Kickapoo, Kaskaskia as well as bands of the Delaware, Ottawa, Pottawatomi, and Miami ceded claims to a vast area ranging from the Mississippi to Ft. Detroit. Of course, as in all such treaties the authority of various chiefs to cede the land was questionable, as was their understanding of just what they were signing. But the peace encouraged a steady stream of settlers to float down the Ohio from Pittsburg or Wheeling, brining enough settlers for Ohio to be admitted to the union in 1803.
That was the official end of the Northwest Territory, the rest of the land was incorporated as the Territory of Indiana, which would further be subdivided into other territories and states over time. But despite this, vast areas remained unsettled and the threat of new hostilities with the Indians, encouraged by the British remained. Jefferson needed to settle the areas quickly to secure them.
The Cumberland Road was key to facilitating a vast migration. It would stretch from Cumberland, Maryland, the last navigable river port on the Potomac, crossing the Allegany Mountains in southern Pennsylvania reaching the Ohio at Wheeling in western Virginia. For much of the route, the Cumberland Road would follow Braddock’s Road, a rough stump and corduroy military trail hacked out by British Troops and Virginia Militia in 1755 for the campaign to capture Fort Duquesne (now Pittsburg) from the French. That was the expedition in which George Washington saw early military glory, helping negotiate a successful retreat after General Braddock was killed in a devastating ambush by French and Indian forces. But instead of following Braddock’s path all of the way to Pittsburg, the new road would push west to Wheeling, a deeper river port.
Just authorizing the new road was not enough. Jefferson had to haggle with a reluctant Congress for appropriations. Many of his own Republicans doubted that the Federal government had the legal authority to expend funds on internal improvements and Federalists were bitterly opposed to western expansion and to anything that might cause friction with the British. Jefferson was out of office before his successor James Madison secured the funds to begin construction. The first contract for road construction was awarded to Henry McKinley on May 8, 1811. Construction began later that year.
The outbreak of the War of 1812 highlighted the military advantages of the road, as the British supported new outbreaks of Indian warfare across the region. But construction, largely done by back-breaking hand labor and mule teams, was slow going.
The road did not reach Wheeling until 1818. Settlers reaching the Ohio could then load their wagons or their contents onto rafts or barges to proceed further west along the river route. Populations swelled along the river and along major tributaries where flatboats could carry goods against the current by polling, but huge areas of the interior remained largely unsettled due to transportation difficulties.
In 1820 Congress authorized the western extension of the road to St. Louis driving due west across southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois well north of the river. In 1825 the authorized route was further extended to Jefferson City, Missouri. Construction, however, continued to lag far behind route authorizations. The road did not reach Columbus, Ohio until 1833, largely following a primitive trail known as Zane’s Trace. It pushed on to Springfield, Ohio by 1835. The route was now being improved by incorporating the first large-scale application of macadamizing in the U.S. Invented by Scottish engineer John Loudon McAdam, the process used hand crushed stone spread and pressed as a hard, smooth pavement.
As the road inched west, however, political support eroded. Internal improvements became a hot button issue between the two emerging political parties, the Whigs who claimed roots in the National Republican program advocated by Madison and Jacksonian Democrats who opposed such federal spending as un-constitutional. The Democrats were getting the upper hand in Congress and even the Whigs were split with the remnants of the Old Federalists still opposing anything that enabled western expansion.
By 1835 the portions of the road east of Wheeling were turned over to the individual states through which it ran. Connecting with a series of existing roads to Baltimore, the states operated the route as a turnpike toll road called unofficially the National Pike.
The road was also being made obsolete. The Erie Canal, which opened in 1825, became a new, easier and cheaper gateway to the west via the Great Lakes. Immigrants from New England, New York, and Pennsylvania suddenly streamed west rapidly filling the northern parts of Ohio, Indian and Illinois as well as Michigan, Wisconsin, and even far away Minnesota. The explosion of railroad construction beginning in the 1830’s also made roads seem obsolete for long distance travel.
The last Federal appropriation for the Road was passed in 1838. Two years later in 1840 Congress failed to renew appropriations by a single vote. That vote, ironically, was cast by the great Western champion of internal improvements, Henry Clay himself. Large stretches of the road in southern Indiana and Illinois remained unfinished. The road and routes were turned over to the states. Indiana and Illinois largely finished work on their sections as far as Vandalia, Illinois.
In 1927 much of the surviving road was incorporated into the new U.S. Highway 40 or that highway closely parallels the old road. Today portions of Interstate 68 in Maryland and Interstate 70 in Pennsylvania follow old route. Around Columbus, Ohio old stone mile markers can still be seen along U.S. 40.