Ohio History Journal

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THE OHIO

ROAD

EXPERIMENT

1913-1916

 

by WAYNE E. FULLER

 

 

In December 1914, the Signal, a Zanesville, Ohio, newspaper, carried a

story captioned, "Jacob Johnson of the West Pike Died Thursday." The

story was interesting, not because Jacob Johnson was renowned, but be-

cause he was, at the time of his death, eighty-seven years old and had lived

his entire life west of Zanesville near the famous highway which the Ameri-

can people knew as the old National Road, but which the people of Zanes-

ville called the West Pike. Born in 1827, more than a year before Andrew

Jackson became president, Johnson had lived to see the traffic along the

old road west of Zanesville pass from flood stage to a trickle. More than

that, his life had spanned a complete cycle in the relationship of the road

to the national government.1

What the people of Zanesville called the West Pike was a fifty-two mile

link in the National Road, which ran from Cumberland, Maryland, to Illi-

nois. Constructed by the national government between 1829 and 1835,

 

NOTES ARE ON PAGES 70-71