BUILDING THE ROAD IN THE WEST
The tales of those who knew the road in the West and those who knew it
in the East are much alike. It is probable that there was one important
distinction--the passenger traffic of the road between the Potomac and
Ohio, which gave life on that portion of the road a peculiar flavor, was
doubtless not equaled on the western division.
For many years the center of western population was in the Ohio Valley,
and good steamers were plying the Ohio when the Cumberland Road was
first opened. Indeed the road was originally intended for the
accommodation of the lower Ohio Valley.[9] Still, as the century grew
old and the interior population became considerable, the Ohio division
of the road became a crowded thoroughfare. An old stage-driver in
eastern Ohio remembers when business was such that he and his companion
Knights of Rein and Whip never went to bed for twenty nights, and more
than a hundred teams might have been met in a score of miles.
When the road was built to Wheeling, its greatest mission was
accomplished--the portage path across the mountains was completed to a
point where river navigation was almost always available. And yet less
than half of the road was finished. It now touched the eastern extremity
of the great state whose public lands were being sold in order to pay
for its building. Westward lay the growing states of Indiana and
Illinois, a per cent of the sale of whose land had already been pledged
to the road. Then came another moment when the great work paused and the
original ambition of its friends was at hazard.
In 1820 Congress appropriated one hundred and forty-one thousand dollars
for completing the road from Washington, Pennsylvania to Wheeling. In
the same year ten thousand dollars was appropriated for laying out the
road between Wheeling, Virginia and a point on the left bank of the
Mississippi River, between St. Louis and the mouth of the Illinois
River. For four years the fate of the road west of the Ohio hung in the
balance, during which time the road was menaced by the specter of
unconstitutionality, already mentioned. But on the third day of March,
1825, a bill was passed by Congress appropriating one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars for building the road to Zanesville, Ohio, and the
extension of the surveys to the permanent seat of government in
Missouri, to pass by the seats of government of Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois.[10] Two years later, one hundred and seventy thousand dollars
was appropriated to complete the road to Zanesville, Ohio, and in 1829
an additional appropriation for continuing it westward was made.[11]
It has been noted that the Cumberland Road from Cumberland to Wheeling
was built on a general alignment of a former thoroughfare of the red men
and the pioneers. So with much of the course west of the Ohio. Between
Wheeling and Zanesville the Cumberland Road followed the course of the
first road made through Ohio, that celebrated route marked out, by way
of Lancaster and Chillicothe, to Kentucky, by Colonel Ebenezer Zane, and
which bore the name of Zane's Trace. This first road built in Ohio was
authorized by an act of Congress passed May 17, 1796.[12] This route
through Ohio was a well worn road a quarter of a century before the
Cumberland Road was extended across the Ohio River.
The act of 1825, authorizing the extension of the great road into the
state of Ohio, was greeted with intense enthusiasm by the people of the
West. The fear that the road would not be continued beyond the Ohio
River was generally entertained, and for good reasons. The debate of
constitutionality, which had been going on for several years, increased
the fear. And yet it would have been breaking faith with the West by the
national Government to have failed to continue the road.
The act appropriated one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for an
extension of the road from Wheeling to Zanesville, Ohio, and work was
immediately undertaken. The Ohio was by far the greatest body of water
which the road crossed, and for many years the passage from Wheeling to
the opposite side of the Ohio, Bridgeport, was made by ferry. Later a
great bridge, the admiration of the countryside, was erected. The road
entered Ohio in Belmont County, and eventually crossed the state in a
due line west, not deviating its course even to touch cities of such
importance as Newark or Dayton, although, in the case of the former at
least, such a course would have been less expensive than the one
pursued. Passing due west the road was built through Belmont, Guernsey,
Muskingum, Licking, Franklin, Madison, Clark, Montgomery, and Preble
Counties, a distance of over three hundred miles. A larger portion of
the Cumberland Road which was actually completed lay in Ohio than in all
other states through which it passed combined.
The work on the road between Wheeling and Zanesville was begun in
1825-26. Ground was broken with great ceremony opposite the Court House
at St. Clairsville, Belmont County, July 4, 1825. An address was made by
Mr. William B. Hubbard. The cost of the road in eastern Ohio was much
less than the cost in Pennsylvania, averaging only about three thousand
four hundred dollars per mile. This included three-inch layers of broken
stone, masonry bridges, and culverts. Large appropriations were made for
the road in succeeding years and the work went on from Zanesville due
west to Columbus. The course of the road between Zanesville and Columbus
was perhaps the first instance where the road ignored, entirely, the
general alignment of a previous road between the same two points. The
old road between Zanesville and Columbus went by way of Newark and
Granville, a roundabout course, but probably the most practicable, as
anyone may attest who has traveled over the Cumberland Road in the
western part of Muskingum County. A long and determined effort was made
by citizens of Newark and Granville to have the new road follow the
course of the old, but without effect. Ohio had not, like Pennsylvania,
demanded that the road should pass through certain towns. The only
direction named by law was that the road should go west on the
straightest possible line through the capital of each state.
The course between Zanesville and Columbus was located by the United
States commissioner, Jonathan Knight, Esq., who, accompanied by his
associates (one of whom was the youthful Joseph E. Johnson), arrived in
Columbus, October 5, 1825. Bids for contracts for building the road from
Zanesville to Columbus were advertised to be received at the
superintendent's office at Zanesville, from the twenty-third to the
thirtieth of June, 1829. The road was fully completed by 1833. The road
entered Columbus on Friend (now Main) Street. There was great rivalry
between the North End and South End over the road's entrance into the
city. The matter was compromised by having it enter on Friend Street and
take its exit on West Broad, traversing High to make the connection.
[Illustration: MAP OF CUMBERLAND ROAD IN THE WEST]
Concerning the route out of Columbus, the _Ohio State Journal_ said:
"The adopted route leaves Columbus at Broad Street, crosses the Scioto
River at the end of that street and on the new wooden bridge erected in
1826 by an individual having a charter from the state. The bridge is not
so permanent nor so spacious as could be desired, yet it may answer the
intended purposes for several years to come. Thence the location passes
through the village of Franklinton, and across the low grounds to the
bluff which is surrounded at a depression formed by a ravine, and at a
point nearly in the prolongation in the direction of Broad Street;
thence by a small angle, a straight line to the bluffs of Darby Creek;
to pass the creek and its bluffs some angles were necessary; thence
nearly a straight line through Deer Creek Barrens, and across that
stream to the dividing grounds, between the Scioto and the Miami waters;
thence nearly down to the valley of Beaver Creek."
The preliminary survey westward was completed in 1826 and extended to
Indianapolis, Indiana. Bids were advertised for the contract west of
Columbus in July 1830. During the next seven years the work was pushed
on through Madison, Clark, Montgomery, and Preble Counties and across
the Indiana line. Proposals for bids for building the road west of
Springfield, Ohio, were advertised for, during August 1837; a condition
being that the first eight miles be finished by January 1838. These
proposals are interesting today. The following is a typical
advertisement:
"NATIONAL ROAD IN OHIO.--Notice to contractors.--Proposals will be
received by the undersigned, until the 19th of August inst., for
clearing and grubbing eight miles of the line of National Road west of
this place, from the 55th to the 62nd mile inclusive west of
Columbus--the work to be completed on or before the 1st day of January,
1838.
"The trees and growth to be entirely cleared away to the distance of 40
feet on each side of the central axis of the road, and all trees
impending over that space to be cut down; all stumps and roots to be
carefully grubbed out to the distance of 20 feet on each side of the
axis, and where occasional high embankments, or spacious side drains may
be required, the grubbing is to extend to the distance of 30 feet on
each side of the same axis. All the timber, brush, stumps and roots to
be entirely removed from the above space of 80 feet in width and the
earth excavated in grubbing, to be thrown back into the hollows formed
by removing the stumps and roots.
"The proposals will state the price per linear rod or mile, and the
offers of competent, or responsible individuals only will be accepted.
"Notice is hereby given to the proprietors of the land, on that part of
the line of the National Road lying between Springfield and the Miami
river, to remove all fences and other barriers now across the line a
reasonable time being allowed them to secure that portion of their
present crops which may lie upon the location of the road.
G. DUTTON,
_Lieutenant U. S. Engineers Supt._
National Road Office, Springfield, Ohio.
August 2nd 1837."[13]
Indianapolis was the center of Cumberland Road operations in Indiana,
and from that city the road was built both eastward and westward. The
road entered Indiana through Wayne County but was not completed until
taken under a charter from the state by the Wayne County Turnpike
Company, and finished in 1850. When Indiana and Illinois received the
road from the national Government it was not completed, though graded
and bridged as far west as Vandalia, then the capital of Illinois.
The Cumberland Road was not to Indiana and Illinois what it was to Ohio,
for somewhat similar reasons that it was less to Ohio than to
Pennsylvania, for the further west it was built the older the century
grew, and the newer the means of transportation which were coming
rapidly to the front. This was true, even, from the very beginning. The
road was hardly a decade old in Pennsylvania, when two canals and a
railroad over the portage, offered a rival means of transportation
across the state from Harrisburg to Pittsburg.[14] When the road reached
Wheeling, Ohio River travel was very much improved, and a large
proportion of traffic went down the river by packet. When the road
entered Indiana, new plans for internal improvements were under way
beside which a turnpike was almost a relic. In 1835-36, Indiana passed
an internal improvement bill, authorizing three great canals and a
railway.[15] The proposed railway, from the village of Madison on the
Ohio River northward to Indianapolis, is a pregnant suggestion of the
amount of traffic to Indiana from the east which passed down the Ohio
from Wheeling, instead of going overland through Ohio.[16] This was,
undoubtedly, mostly passenger traffic, which was very heavy at this
time.[17]
But the dawning of a new era in transportation had already been heralded
in the national hall of legislation. In 1832 the House Committee on
Roads and Canals had discussed in their report the question of the
relative cost of various means of intercommunication, including
railways. Each report of the committee for the next five years mentioned
the same subject, until, in 1836, the matter of substituting a railway
for the Cumberland Road between Columbus and the Mississippi was very
seriously considered.
In that year a House Bill (No. 64) came back from the Senate amended in
two particulars, one authorizing that the appropriations made for
Illinois should be confined to grading and bridging only, and should not
be construed as implying that Congress had pledged itself to macadamize
the road.
The House Committee struck out these amendments and substituted a more
sweeping one than any yet suggested in the history of the road. This
amendment provided that a railroad be constructed west of Columbus with
the money appropriated for a highway. The committee reported, that,
after long study of the question, many reasons appeared why the change
should be made. It was stated to the committee by respectable authority,
that much of the stone for the masonry and covering for the road east of
Columbus had to be transported for considerable distances over bad roads
across the adjacent country at very great expense, and that, in its
continuance westward through Ohio, this source of expense would be
greatly augmented. Nevertheless the compact at the time of the admission
of the western states supposed the western termination of the road
should be the Mississippi. The estimated expense of the road's extension
to Vandalia, Illinois, sixty-five miles east of the Mississippi,
amounted to $4,732,622.83, making the total expense of the entire road
amount to about ten millions. The committee said it would have been
unfaithful to the trust reposed in it, if it had not bestowed much
attention upon this matter, and it did not hesitate to ground on a
recent report of the Secretary of War, this very important change of the
plan of the road. This report of the War Department showed that the
distance between Columbus and Vandalia was three hundred and thirty-four
miles and the estimated cost of completing the road that far would be
$4,732,622.83, of which $1,120,320.01 had been expended and
$3,547,894.83 remained to be expended in order to finish the road to
that extent according to plans then in operation; that after its
completion it would require an annual expenditure on the three hundred
and thirty-four miles of $392,809.71 to keep it in repair, the engineers
computing the annual cost of repairs of the portion of the road between
Wheeling and Columbus (one hundred and twenty-seven miles) at
$99,430.30.
On the other hand the estimated cost of a railway from Columbus to
Vandalia on the route of the Cumberland Road was $4,280,540.37, and the
cost of preservation and repair of such a road, $173,718.25. Thus the
computed cost of the railway exceeded that of the turnpike but about
twenty per cent, while the annual expense of repairing the former would
fall short more than fifty-six per cent. In addition to the advantage of
reduced cost was that of less time consumed in transportation; for,
assuming as the committee did a rate of speed of fifteen miles per hour
(which was five miles per hour less than the then customary speed of
railway traveling in England on the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad,
and about the ordinary rate of speed of the American locomotives), it
would require only twenty-three hours for news from Baltimore to reach
Columbus, forty-two hours to Indianapolis, fifty-four to Vandalia, and
fifty-eight to St. Louis.
One interesting argument for the substitution of the railway for the
Cumberland Road was given as follows:
"When the relation of the general Government to the states which it
unites is justly regarded; when it is considered it is especially
charged with the common defense; that for the attainment of this end
the militia must be combined in time of war with the regular army and
the state with the United States troops; that mutual prompt and vigorous
concert should mark the efforts of both for the accomplishment of a
common end and the safety of all; it seems needless to dwell upon the
importance of transmitting intelligence between the state and federal
government with the least possible delay and concentrating in a period
of common danger their joint efforts with the greatest possible
dispatch. It is alike needless to detail the comparative advantages of a
railroad and an ordinary turnpike under such circumstances. A few weeks,
nay, a very few days, or hours, may determine the issue of a campaign,
though happily for the United States their distance from a powerful
enemy may limit the contingency of war to destruction short of that by
which the events of an hour had involved ruin of an empire."
Despite the weight of argument presented by the House Committee their
amendment was in turn stricken out, and the bill of 1836 appropriated
six hundred thousand dollars for the Cumberland Road, both of the
Senate amendments which the House Committee had stricken out being
incorporated in the bill.
The last appropriation for the Cumberland Road was dated May 25, 1838;
it granted one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the road in both
Ohio and Indiana, and nine thousand dollars for the road in Illinois.