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.

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