 The year was 1806 and our nation was not yet 30 years old. Lewis and Clark had completed their exploration of the West, finding a vastness to this nation that could never have been imagined by the men born in countries barely the size of a single state in the modern United States.
The mandate was clear. Explore and settle the interior of this great, rich land, and establish overland links between the seaboard colonies and the inland towns and cities. Inland towns, such as St. Louis, were primarily located on major waterways which were established after exploration of rivers, like the Mississippi.
President Thomas Jefferson laid the plans and signed the legislation in 1806 for the first and only federally funded interstate highway. Construction began in Cumberland, Maryland in 1811, hence the commonly used name Cumberland Road. The road had many other names, including Great National Pike, National Trail and Old National Road.
 Traversing six states - Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois - the National Road created a conduit for pioneers seeking a new life in a pristine world. Seek they did: on foot, by wagon and on horseback over a road built of mud, gravel, and split logs. In many places, the road was barely a path, littered with tree stumps. Swamps, low areas and river crossings were “paved” with logs, earning the road another nickname: the corduroy road.
Many of the earliest pioneers were farmers, who settled in enclaves with fellow countrymen. Those early settlements became villages, town and cities, which still retain those national identities.
 Even in those early days, there were n’er-do-wells, scalawags, and highwaymen prowling the road, preying on travelers and settlers alike. Frontier law was the law of the land, and settlers frequently banded together to bring the
bandits to justice.
The national road bears the footprints of presidents and legislators, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Wm. Howard Taft and Steven A. Douglas. Outlaws Jesse and Frank James, abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy and the “fire and brimstone” Methodist Circuit Rider Peter Cartwright all traveled through this region on the National Road.
Sites on the National Road
Each community is unique, having been settled by a variety of European nationalities, a fact still evident today in the architecture of historic buildings.
For architectural interest and history, visit the Effingham Courthouse, Heart Theatre and Sculpture on the Avenues in Effingham.
Just down the road, the Monastery Museum is the center of attraction in Teutopolis. Also, Alwerdt’s Gardens, Ballard Nature Center, Ben Winter’s Steam Engine Museum and the Wright House are found just outside the City.
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