America's First Interstate

More than any other transportation artery, the National Road embodied geographic mobility and westward expansion—core elements in America's national origin story. Historians have largely ignored that highway, however, perhaps because it represents the inability of the federal system to articulate a coherent national transportation policy. The 1787 Northwest Ordinance opened the Ohio Valley to settlement and statehood. Highway access to the area featured prominently in the 1808 report of Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin. In 1810 Congress approved funding for the National Road. The allocation of a miniscule portion of the proceeds from western land sales deprived the project of adequate resources, however. In 1817 President James Madison vetoed legislation to apply surplus funds from the Second Bank of the United States to internal improvements. His misgivings regarding the constitutionality of federal support encouraged state governments to pursue uncoordinated, duplicative, and competitive projects. John Quincy Adams gave the National Road a brief reprieve before Andrew Jackson's veto of the Maysville Road Bill in 1830 signaled the end of direct federal support for internal improvements. Construction occurred in fits and starts on a highway that connected Cumberland, Maryland, and Vandalia, Illinois. Belatedly, federal officials realized that ongoing maintenance constituted a greater burden than initial construction, and during the 1830s they incrementally transferred the existing highway to the states

Archaeology · Business · Constitution · Constitutionality · Governor · Legislation · Payment · Political science · Politics · Settlement (finance · State (computer science · State highway · Treasury · Veto · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American Environmental and Regional History · American History and Culture · Engineering · Finance · History · Law · Public Administration