Historic National Road - Ohio

Historic National Road - Ohio

Parks Directory of the United States / National Scenic Byways

Address: c/o Ohio National Road Association
76 E High St
Springfield, OH 45502
Phone: 937-324-7752;
Web: www.ohionationalroad.org Description: America's first interstate highway, the National Road was built to to link the people and cities along the Eastern seaboard to those on the frontiers west of the Allegheny Mountains. Authorized by Congress in 1806, construction of the road began in Cumberland, Maryland in 1811. The road reached Vandalia, then the Illinois state capitol, in 1839 and later was completed to the Illinois border at East Saint Louis, opening a link to the water route of the Mississippi. The Ohio section of the byway was constructed during the 1820s and 1830s and today the route is defined by US 40. Points of interest include: the Blaine Hill Bridge, the state's oldest bridge built in 1828 and named the state Bicentennial Bridge; Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, which includes a collection of sites on the Wright brothers and Paul Laurence Dunbar; the National Road/Zane Grey Museum; and a number of stone S-bridges, a unique feature of the National Road, at Blaine Hill, Salt Fork, and Fox Creek.
Legth: 228 miles (Ohio); 824 miles (entire route). Start/Endpoint: The east/west route runs from Baltimore, Maryland, to the Mississippi River at the Eads Bridge in East Saint Louis, Illinois. It crosses six states: Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The Ohio section of the road runs from Bridgeport across the entire length of the state to the Indiana border. Designation/Year: All-American Road (2002).

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See other parks in Ohio.