Conestoga wagon on National Road photograph   Save
Norris Schneider; National Road/Zane Grey
Description: This photograph shows a team of four horses hitched to a Conestoga wagon that has stopped on the National Road, ca. 1900. Two African American men are riding the two horses nearest the wagon. The road surface appears to be somewhat rutted. The National Road (also called the Cumberland Road or the U.S. Road) was the first federally sponsored roadway. The U.S. Congress commissioned the National Road in 1806 as a conduit to the West, linking the Potomac River and Cumberland, Maryland, to St. Louis, Missouri, and the Mississippi River. The road opened Ohio and the Northwest Territory to settlement and trade with the eastern U.S. By 1838 the Cumberland Road had reached Springfield, Ohio; three years later it reached Vandalia, Illiinois, where construction stopped due to a funding shortfall. By this time the railroads had attracted travelers and business shipping away from the National Road, and the project was abandoned. The National Road crossed the state of Ohio along what is now U.S. 40. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: AL05823
Subjects: Wagons--United States--History;Ohio Economy--Transportation and Development
Places: Norris Schneider; National Road/Zane Grey