Early
Federal Aid
for
Roads and Canals
Zone’s Trace—First Federally Aided Road
In March 1796, Colonel Ebenezer Zane, the founder of Wheeling, Virginia, petitioned Congress for permission to build a post road overland through the territory northwest of the Ohio River to the important river port of Limestone, Kentucky (now Maysville). Such a route, Zane said, would be 100 miles shorter than the windings of the Ohio River, on which 15 men with their boats were then engaged in transporting the mails, and would also be immune to interruption by floods, floating ice or low water. The road would afford far faster mail service while saving at least three-quarters of the $4,000 annual cost of operating the mail route. Furthermore, the proposed road would provide a shorter and safer route for travelers both to and from the West.
As his only compensation for building the road, Zane asked that he be allowed to locate United States military bounty land warrants totaling three square miles where his road crossed the Muskingum, Hockhocking, and Scioto Rivers.
Colonel Zane’s request was approved by Congress in the act of May 17, 1796, with the stipulation that Zane establish ferries upon the three rivers and operate them at rates of ferriage to be established by any two judges of the Northwest Territory.[1]
Zane’s first road was no more than a pack trail, but as soon as it was finished, the Government established a mail route over it from Wheeling to Maysville and beyond to Lexington, Kentucky, and eventually Nashville, Tennessee. Zane’s Trace played an important part in opening southeastern Ohio to settlement. It was also used by hundreds of flatboatmen returning on foot or horseback to Pittsburgh and upriver towns from downriver ports as far away as New Orleans.
By 1803, the road was chopped out wide enough for wagons to pass. The portion between Wheeling and Zanesville became a part of the National Road after 1825, and the rest became an important turnpike in the 1830’s.
The grant to Zane appears to be the first instance of local road subsidy by the Federal Government, but it did not have much influence on Federal policy afterward. Furthermore, the aid extended was not particularly generous, since, in any event, Zane had the legal right as a Revolutionary War veteran to exchange his warrants (and any he might buy from other veterans) for public land. In reality, the act gave Zane only the right to locate his lands in advance of the general public and at strategic locations where he could later profit from their resale to settlers.
Financing Roads in New States
The lack of roads, and the resources to build them, was a serious impediment to the development of the lands north and west of the Ohio River. The United
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- ↑ A. B. Hulbert, Historic Highways of America, Vol. 11 (Arthur H. Clark, Co., Cleveland, 1904) pp. 157, 158.
