Bridge on which Zane’s Trace Crossed the Muskingum River at Zanesville, Ohio
The matter of ferriage was a most important item on pioneer roads as indicated by the Act of Congress quoted. The Court of General Quarter Sessions met at Adamsville, Adams County, December 12, 1797, and made the following the legal rates of ferriage across the Scioto and Ohio Rivers, both of which Zane’s Trace crossed:
| Scioto River: | |||
| Man and horse | 12½ | cents. | |
| Single | 6¼ | “ | |
| Wagon and team | 75 | “ | |
| Horned cattle (each) | 6¼ | “ | |
| Ohio River: | |||
| Man and horse | 18½ | “ | |
| Single | 9¼ | “ | |
| Wagon and team | $1.15 | ||
| Horned cattle | 9¼ | “ | [41] |
No sooner was Zane’s Trace opened than the Government established a mail route between Wheeling and Maysville and Lexington. For the real terminus of the trace was not by any means at little Maysville; an ancient buffalo route and well-worn white man’s road led into the interior of Kentucky from Maysville, known in history as the Maysville Road and Maysville Pike. On the Ohio side this mail route from Wheeling and Lexington was known by many titles in many years; it was the Limestone Road, the Maysville Pike, the Limestone and Chillicothe Road, and the Zanesville Pike; the Maysville and Zanesville Turnpike was constructed between Zanesville and the Ohio River. At Zanesville the road today is familiarly known as the Maysville Pike while in Kentucky it is commonly called the Zanesville Pike.
“When the Indian trail gets widened, graded and bridged to a good road,” wrote Emerson, “there is a benefactor, there is a missionary, a pacificator, a wealth-bringer, a maker of markets, a vent for industry.”[42] The little road here under consideration is unique among American highways in its origin and in its history. It was demanded, not by war, but by civilization, not for exploration and settlement but by settlements that were already made and in need of communion and commerce. It was created by an act of Congress as truly as the Cumberland Road, which soon should, in part, supersede it. And finally it was on the subject of the Maysville Turnpike that the question of internal improvement by the national government was at last decided when, in 1830, President Jackson signed that veto which made the name of Maysville a household word throughout the United States.
In 1825, after a delay which created great suspense in the West, the Cumberland Road at last leaped the Ohio River at Wheeling. Zane’s Trace, now a wide, much-traveled avenue, offered a route westward to Zanesville which could be but little improved upon. The blazed tree gave way to the mile-stone and the pannier and saddle-bag to the rumbling stagecoach and the chaise. It is all a pretty, quiet picture and its story is totally unlike that of Boone’s rough path over the Cumberlands. For settlements sprang up rapidly in this land of plenty; we have seen that there were beginnings at Chillicothe and Zanesville when Sample passed this way in 1797. By 1800, Zane’s lots at the crossing of the Hockhocking (first known as New Lancaster, and later as Lancaster—from the town of that name in Pennsylvania) were selling; his terms and inducements to settlers, especially mechanics, are particularly interesting.[43]
As intimated, the Kentucky division of the Maysville Pike—leading from the Ohio River through Washington, Paris, and Lexington—became famous in that it was made a test case to determine whether or not the Government had the right to assist in the building of purely state (local) roads by taking shares in local turnpike companies.
This much-mooted question was settled once for all by President Andrew Jackson’s veto of “A Bill Authorizing a subscription of stock in the Maysville, Washington, Paris, and Lexington Turnpike Road Company,” which was passed by the House February 24, 1830. It read:[44] “Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to subscribe, in the name and for the use of the United States, for fifteen hundred shares of the capital stock of the Maysville, Washington, Paris, and Lexington Turnpike Road Company, and to pay for the same at such times, and in such proportions, as shall be required of, and paid by, the stockholders generally, by the rules and regulations of the aforesaid company, to be paid out of any money in the Treasury, not otherwise appropriated: Provided, That not more than one-third part of the sum, so subscribed for the use of the United States, shall be demanded in the present year, nor shall any greater sum be paid on the shares so subscribed for, than shall be proportioned to assessments made on individual or corporate stockholders.
“Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That the said Secretary of the Treasury shall vote for the President and Directors of the aforesaid company, according to such number of shares as the United States may, at any time, hold in the stock thereof, and shall receive upon the said stock the proportion of the tolls which shall, from time to time, be due to the United States for the shares aforesaid, and shall have and enjoy, in behalf of the United States, every other right of stockholder in said Company.”
In his first annual message to Congress, dated December 8, 1829, President Jackson stated plainly his attitude to the great question of internal improvements. “As ... the period approaches when the application of the revenue to the payment of [national] debt will cease, the disposition of the surplus will present a subject for the serious deliberation of Congress.... Considered in connection with the difficulties which have heretofore attended appropriations for purposes of internal improvement, and with those which this experience tells us will certainly arise whenever power over such subjects may be exercised by the General Government, it is hoped that it may lead to the adoption of some plan which will reconcile the diversified interests of the States and strengthen the bonds which unite them.... To avoid these evils it appears to me that the most safe, just, and federal disposition which could be made of the surplus revenue would be its apportionment among the several States according to their ratio of representation, and should this measure not be found warranted by the Constitution that it would be expedient to propose to the States an amendment authorizing it.”[45]