Ohio History Journal

14                                                OHIO HISTORY

the West Pike passed through Muskingum, Licking, and Franklin counties,

and reached from Zanesville to Columbus; and if it was not built as elab-

orately as a Roman road, still it was like the rest of the National Road, the

best built road in the nation. Altogether it was eighty feet wide, with a

central thirty foot macadamized section which had been graded and filled

to a depth of almost one foot with three strata of crushed stone, or "pre-

pared metal," as it was called. Furthermore, the low places along the way

and the rivers and streams that crossed the road had been either provided

with culverts or bridged with sturdy stone bridges that were models

of masonry in their day.2

Once, in the days of Presidents Jackson and Martin Van Buren, the

West Pike had been a part of the nation's principal artery connecting

East and West. In those days a great chain of humanity moved along its

graveled surface, tarried overnight at the inns and wagon-stations along

the way, and eventually made its way beyond Zanesville and Columbus as

it moved on to the ever-beckoning West. Congressmen, senators, even

presidents, mingled with the westering pioneers as they made their way

to and from the nation's capital. And over this road, too, in overburdened

stagecoaches, passed the United States mail, bringing the news of the day

to a great many isolated Americans for whom it was the only means of

communication with the world east of the Appalachian Mountains.3

The West Pike had been built by the national government, it was true,

but the government did not long maintain it. Indeed, as early as 1831, be-

fore the road was completely built, the state government of Ohio agreed

to maintain the entire National Road through Ohio and established a toll

system for that purpose. Eventually, however, this system too broke down,

and in the years after the Civil War, the upkeep of the road was left to

the counties, each to care for that portion of the road within its boundaries.⁴

By this time, the heyday of the National Road had passed. Better

methods of transportation west had been found than the old road with all

its slowness and discomforts could provide. Even before the Civil War,

men had become interested in other forms of transportation, first in canals,

and then in railroads; and after the Civil War, the building of railroads

throughout the Midwest so diminished the traffic on the road that by 1900

it was scarcely more than another of the country's poor farm-to-market

country roads.

But even then a new era was opening for the National Road, and more

particularly for the West Pike. For a good-roads campaign was under way

in the early 1900's, and congressmen and their constituents had begun to

talk grandly about securing help from the national government to build

and maintain their roads.

The idea was net new. In fact, congressmen and presidents had dis-

cussed it thoroughly at the time the old National Road was being built,

only to come at last to the conclusion that for the national government to

build and maintain roads in the states was unconstitutional. This belief had

somehow become deeply implanted in the public mind and was not the least

16                                                OHIO HISTORY

scheme to build a limited number of roads located in areas of the nation

where climatic and topographic conditions varied extensively from one

another. In this way, sums larger than $10,000 of government money might

be spent on each experimental road and a variety of road materials might

be tested under different kinds of weather and soil conditions.⁷

Among the sites chosen for the experiment was the West Pike. Perhaps

the old road was chosen partly for sentimental reasons; in any case, it

seemed particularly fitting that here, where once the government had built

a road, it should undertake to rebuild it some eighty years later. Accord-

ingly, a contract was drawn in which it was agreed that the national

government would contribute $120,000 to the rebuilding of the West Pike

from Zanesville to the South Fork of the Licking River near the town of

Hebron, a distance of almost twenty-four miles. This sum was to be matched

by $100,000 from Muskingum County and $140,000 from Licking County.

In addition, the state of Ohio agreed to give $80,000 toward the work and

also to continue, at its own expense, the building of the road through

the remaining part of Licking County to the east line of Franklin County,

where it would connect with a portion of the old road that had already been

rebuilt by the people of Franklin County.8

By the spring of 1914, Muskingum and Licking counties had bonded

themselves to raise the needed money and were ready to sign the final con-

tract with the secretary of agriculture, when opposition to the project

arose from the brick manufacturers in Zanesville.9

The trouble began when it was discovered that the national government

had specified that the West Pike was to be rebuilt with cement instead of

brick. As it happened, over a thousand men were employed in the Zanes-

ville brick factories, and the revelation of the government's decision to use

cement on the road threw the Zanesville Chamber of Commerce into a

tizzy. General R. B. Brown, secretary of the chamber of commerce, de-

clared that "the decision was an outrage to Zanesville and particularly

Zanesville business interests," and urged the townspeople to fight the great

injustice. "If there is an ounce of red blood in our bodies," said he, "we

will protest against this to the bitter end."10

The reason for the decision to use cement was, of course, a matter of

dollars and cents. The government was prepared to support the rebuilding

of the West Pike at a cost up to, but not exceeding, $16,000 per mile. Cement

could be used for that figure; brick could not. But this explanation was not

satisfactory to the Zanesville business interests. R. C. Burton, secretary

and treasurer of the Townshend Brick and Contracting Company, was

certain the proposal to use cement instead of brick was a conspiracy be-

tween the government and cement manufacturers. Claiming that "the

specifications requiring the adoption of concrete were prepared months

ago at the instigation of the concrete manufacturers," and "that the brick

manufacturers 'got it in the neck,'" he prophesied that a delegation of

brick builders from all over the country would go to Washington to make

an investigation. Moreover, if worse came to worst, he said, and "there is

THE OHIO ROAD EXPERIMENT                                        17

to be used concrete or nothing, it will be nothing, as the brick manufac-

turers will enjoin the work if concrete is to be used."11

For a time, it appeared the brick builders would make good their

threat to stop the work. They filed a strong protest with Governor James

M. Cox and State Highway Commissioner James R. Marker, and these two

in turn, with the support of the district's congressman, George White, tried

to get the post office department, one of the government agencies in charge

of the experiment, to agree to the demands for brick. But all in vain. In-

deed, it seemed for a moment that the post office department might cancel

the project entirely and move the Ohio appropriation elsewhere. Rumors

of this helped induce those who most wanted the road to raise some nine

petitions urging that the road be build with concrete if it could not be

built with brick. After this the opposition to the building of the new road

began to melt, although as late as April a delegation from the Zanesville

Chamber of Commerce was in Washington protesting against the use of

cement on the road.12

In the meantime, on March 23, 1914, while the controversy was still

raging, the final agreement between the national government, the state of

Ohio, and Muskingum and Licking counties was reached regarding the im-

provement of the West Pike. The next month the contract for building the

road was let to the H. E. Culbertson Company of Cleveland for $436,017.00,

and finally, on May 11, the Signal noted that the headquarters of the Cul-

bertson Company were being established near the Talley icehouse and that

some fifty road workers had been brought to the city and moved to a camp

on the West Pike. Work on the road was expected to begin within the

week.13

The government's road engineers, surveyors, and economic statisticians

who swept into Zanesville to plan the rebuilding of the road and collect

statistical data on the area, found the West Pike considerably changed from

the way it was in the pre-Civil War days when the great wagon trains and

stagecoaches had rolled across its macadam back. The countryside along

the way, with its fields of corn and wheat and pastures dotted with grazing

sheep and cattle were much the same as they had been, of course, as were

the rolling hills that ranged from an elevation of 725 to 1125 feet. Even the

little villages through which the road passed were not much different in

point of population from what they had been in the earlier days. Mt.

Sterling, Gratiot, Brownsville, and Jacksontown each had something more

than two hundred inhabitants in 1913, while Linnville and Coaltown

claimed seventy-five apiece and Amsterdam one hundred.14

It was in the road itself, showing all the ravages of time and neglect,

that the changes were most marked. Here and there the original surfacing

on the West Pike had virtually disappeared. Chuck-holes and ruts marred

its appearance, water stood in puddles in its low places, and in one spot

at least, a small stream had washed away a part of the road. Indicative

of the general status of road maintenance of the period was a sign

marking the place where a neglected county road joined the West Pike.

THE OHIO ROAD EXPERIMENT                                      19

And surely most familiar of all to the old stage-driver had he visited the

West Pike in 1914, would have been the five-mile tavern some three miles

west of Zanesville. Here was one of the finest taverns to be found along

the entire length of the National Road. Made for the most part of dressed

limestone, the larger portion of it had been built in 1832 and the smaller

in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War. The accumulation of years, a small

picket fence, the telephone lines running past the door, and the growth of

trees around it, had somewhat changed its outward appearance, but any

stagecoach driver who had stayed there over night would have been un-

likely to mistake this old tavern for another. Its huge chimneys and mas-

sive, rugged appearance were features not easily forgotten.18

Neither the government's engineers nor those of the Culbertson Com-

pany, however, had much time to contemplate the old landmarks along the

road. Unlike the contract "for clearing and grubbing" given the contractors

who built the road in the 1830's, the Culbertson contract called for grading,

paving, and building drainage structures, and this was a gigantic under-

taking, especially since the making of cement roads was still in the experi-

mental stage. Indeed, until the work began on the West Pike, there was only

a handful of cement roads in the nation. In 1912, a demonstration on the

building of cement roads, which the Culbertson engineers may have ob-

served, was given in Wayne County, Michigan, but even here paving had

apparently not reached the proportions contemplated on the West Pike.19

The first thing that had to be done on the West Pike was to order the

farmers and telephone companies who had encroached on the road's right-

of-way, to move their telephone lines, fences, and even barns back from the

road to give the contractor the needed clearance. The second problem was

to find some way to move sand and cement and other materials to places

along the road where they were needed. The Culbertson Company solved

this by building a narrow-gauge railroad along the road's right-of-way to

haul the needed materials. The railroad would have been expensive under

any circumstances, but it was the more so in this case because the steep

grade between Linnville and Gratiot necessitated the use of special steam

engines.²⁰

In spite of these difficulties, grading from both the Hebron and Zanes-

ville ends of the road and construction of the Culbertson narrow-gauge rail-

road began on May 14, 1914. On June 9, the building and repair of bridges

and culverts, many of them still in wonderful condition after eighty some

years, was started. Finally, on June 17, concreting began with mixer one

at the Zanesville station. One week later, mixer two at the National Road

station near Hebron went into operation, and on July 22, mixer three, sta-

tioned some distance east of mixer two, was set to move west with the ex-

pectation of meeting mixer two in time.21

Of all the work done on the West Pike, the most experimental, important,

and demanding was the concreting. The huge Austin mixers that could lay

down two miles of concrete in a month, ate up a gargantuan amount of sand

and Portland cement, all of which, of course, had to be hauled to the paving

20                                                OHIO HISTORY

site over the Culbertson railroad. Moreover, great care had to be taken

not only to screen the gravel carefully but also to get the correct mixture

of sand and cement, and at least once during the project the bureau of

public roads had to warn the government people on the job that the cement

samples sent from the Ohio road did not measure up to the bureau's stand-

ards. Water, too, was a problem and at one point had to be pumped from

Timber Run near the Talley ice plant to the job five miles away. But this

was not entirely satisfactory. Because of a dry summer, Timber Run began

to go dry in August, and new sources of water had to be found farther out

on the road.22

Nevertheless, once the paving began it proceeded smoothly and efficiently.

Work was conducted from numbered stations, beginning at station 0-00 at

Zanesville and station 683-70 near the National Road station, and the ce-

ment was laid in sections sixteen feet wide and varying in some instances

as much as thirty to ninety feet in length. After the cement was poured and

smoothed, it was covered with a canvas, which was kept wet for about four

days. Then the canvas was removed and loose dirt thrown over the cement.

Like the canvas, the dirt was kept wet for as long as two weeks; finally, it

too was removed, to leave, as a reporter from the Signal wrote, "one of the

smoothest pieces of roadway in Ohio."23

So well was the work progressing, in spite of shortages and dry weather,

that on Wednesday, August 26, 1914, some 640 feet of concrete were laid,

and predictions were made that the entire road of nearly twenty-four miles

would be paved by the middle of November. As it turned out, this prediction

was overly optimistic. The work had been somewhat slowed by the dry

weather, it was true, but the scarcity of gravel proved to be the principal

problem. Partly for experimental purposes the Culbertson Company was

using ordinary gravel and crushed stone on the project. Both of these were

apparently somewhat costly to obtain in the immediate vicinity, and in

August, Culbertson Company officials began to suggest the impossibility of

securing enough gravel and crushed stone to complete the job in November.

There was some indication that the company had not really tried very hard

to obtain the necessary materials in the nearby area, and intended to delay

the project until the next year in order to use the winter months to bring

cheaper gravel in from Dresden, some twenty miles away.²⁴

Whatever the reason, the Culbertson Company did stop construction in

November 1914. Mixer three had completed its assignment by October 27,

but mixers one and two shut down November 14, still far short of their

goals. The work on the drainage structures, also uncompleted, came to a

halt in Licking County November 13, and in Muskingum County Novem-

ber 16. Only the grading in Licking County continued until January 28,

1915.25

Although the concreting had been rigidly inspected by government in-

spectors, a fact which had caused the Culbertson Company much concern,

certain flaws which were to appear in all cement roads began to show up in

the West Pike in the fall and winter of 1914-15. About a month after the

THE OHIO ROAD EXPERIMENT                                      21

first sections had been scraped free of dirt, Charles H. Moorefield, the gov-

ernment's engineer in charge of the work, noticed that the pavement had

begun to spall, or flake off, at the joints between the sections. Then during

the winter months, probably because of the contraction of the cement, long-

itudinal cracks appeared.26

It was then generally believed that some bituminous product could be

used to prevent spalling and to fill in the cracks, but the building of cement

roads was so new, no one preparation to correct these problems had been

decided upon. Upon Moorefield's request for a recommendation, the bureau

of public roads replied that he might use a light mixture of water, gasoline,

and tar, which had been used on the government's road experiment at

Chevy Chase, Maryland; or he might experiment with other preparations,

Tarvia A, Standard Macadam Binder A, or Trinidad Liquid Asphalt, all of

which, the bureau reminded him, would have to be heated before using.

Apparently, however, Moorefield came to the conclusion that no such exotic

preparations were needed, for in the spring of the year, upon discovering

the longitudinal cracks, he wrote the bureau recommending that plain tar

be used to correct the damage.27

In spite of the cracks, however, and overlooking the dismay of the

engineer from the Ohio State Highway Commission concerning them, the

government inspectors believed that, in general, the road had weathered

well, and as spring returned, they and the Culbertson Company prepared

to recommence construction on the West Pike. Work was delayed in Mus-

kingum County, but grading began in Licking County on March 15, 1915,

and by the middle of April the company's stone crushing apparatus there

was turning out eighty yards of crushed stone a day. On May 5, concreting

began with mixer two, and on May 17, work began again on the drainage

structures in the county.28

Just as the work on the road was being renewed, however, a new crisis

threatened to disrupt the project once more. In November 1914 state elec-

tions had been held, and Governor James M. Cox had been defeated by Re-

publican Frank B. Willis. Soon after entering office, the Republican at-

torney general had made a ruling that the state government could pursue

no road project for which it did not have the funds in hand, and word leaked

out that because there was no money left in the treasury for the purpose,

the state government was not going to complete the West Pike construction

from the South Fork of the Licking River to the east line of Franklin

County as it had promised to do in the contract made with the postmaster

general and the secretary of agriculture.29

The prospect of such a possibility greatly excited and angered the board

of commissioners of Licking County. The county had, the commissioners

said, incurred an indebtedness of $140,000 on the assumption that the state

government would complete the road through the county, and they threat-

ened to withhold the rest of the money owing the national government

project unless the state government agreed to fulfill its obligations. More-

over, they wrote Congressman William A. Ashbrook, a native of Licking

THE OHIO ROAD EXPERIMENT                                        23

miles away. Even the Mt. Sterling hill with its famous S curve, often

thought of as the most dangerous place in the entire road, had been paved.33

In the spring of 1915, this strip of smooth pavement from Zanesville

to Mt. Sterling was simply irresistible to the autoists, as they were called,

and as the weather grew warmer, more and more people had apparently

taken to joy-riding along the West Pike, particularly at night. On June

14, in the middle of the night, the L. L. Hazlitt family, living just west of

Mt. Sterling and about three hundred yards beyond the end of the paving,

was awakened by the sound of an automobile turning around in front of

their home. The car pulled away and headed for the village, where it

aroused Emery Pange, who rushed from his bed to the window just in

time to see a large touring car roaring through the town, headed for

Zanesville. "The cut-out was 'wide-open,'" he told a reporter next day,

"and the machine was going about as fast as I ever saw one go."34

How fast the car was going when it began the steep descent of the Mt.

Sterling hill was uncertain, but probably too fast. It was raining and the

road was slippery, and at the S turn, Henry A. Buerhaus, the driver of

the car and a former county auditor, who had been involved in the first

negotiations with the government concerning the rebuilding of the road,

lost control of his machine. The automobile left the road, rolled over a steep

embankment, and was prevented from falling fifty feet to the stone bridge

at the floor of the valley only by the timely intervention of a telephone pole.

Buerhaus, and his companion on the trip, Guy Longley, a former hackdriver

and active Republican in Zanesville, were pinned beneath the car, and it

was not until about 4:30 in the morning that the overturned automobile was

discovered. By that time, Buerhaus had managed to crawl from under it

and was stretched out along the Culbertson Company's railroad, while Guy

Longley lay dead underneath the wreck.35

Zanesville was startled by the accident. In a land just emerging from the

horse and buggy era, before slaughter on the highways had been accepted

as the normal course of events, an automobile accident of such proportions

was a major catastrophe. With the exception of some boys who had gone

off the road on a bobsled near the same place during the winter, this was

the first major accident to occur along the new West Pike, and, according

to the Signal, "hundreds of automobiles containing sightseers made the trip

out the pike to the scene of the accident," in spite of the rain and the slip-

pery road.36

All that day and the next and for a week or more, people talked about the

tragedy and the terrible S curve and wondered what to do about it. "The

Mt. Sterling hill, where the tragedy occurred," ran an editorial in the

Signal, "is a treacherous descent under normal conditions and normal speed

and all drivers should not attempt the descent unless sure that their ma-

chine is under full control." But for many in the town, the Signal's advice

was insufficient. They demanded that something be done to prevent cars

from slipping off the road at that point. A cement wall, three feet high, or

a fence painted white, they said, should be erected around the curve in the

road where the Buerhaus car overturned.37

24                                               OHIO HISTORY

But it would take time and money to build a fence, and a number of

prominent Zanesville citizens did not want to wait. The result was that

a group of autoists, apparently led by Chester A. Baird, a local druggist,

got permission from the county commissioners to erect a large sign at the

top of the hill warning drivers of the curve ahead. And in a short time

a sign that could be seen for a half mile was built and erected some three

hundred feet from the place where the tragic accident had occurred. It

was six feet high and five feet wide, with huge letters spelling out the

words DANCER, DOUBLE      CURVE--DRIVE       SLOW, SOUND

KLAXON.38

The accident, however, apparently never diminished the appeal the

smooth, new pavement had for the autoists of Zanesville. Scarcely a month

following the Buerhaus accident, two young men from the city borrowed,

without permission, a Ford touring car from the H. J. Baker grocery com-

pany, and accompanied by two of the town's young women, went for a ride

on the pike. Leaving Zanesville about eleven at night they had apparently

driven until about midnight, when for an unexplained reason, their car

struck the ties of the Culbertson Company's railroad and upset. Strangely,

the two men were found lying near the car unconscious, according to the

Signal's account, but their women companions had disappeared. The men

were not seriously injured, but they were brought to the city and placed

in the Good Samaritan Hospital for treatment.39

This second automobile accident on the West Pike occurred July 13, just

one day after the Culbertson Company had resumed concreting in Mus-

kingum County and one day before work on the drainage structures there

had begun, and with the resumption of construction it was predicted that

the concreting of the National Road would be completed in two months.

Yet hardly had construction started and the prediction been made, than

trouble once more struck the project causing more delays and threatening

to upset time schedules.40

In the 1830's it had been the wet weather and the cholera that had de-

layed construction on the West Pike, and an exasperated superintendent of

construction had had to write back to his superior in Washington that

"cholera made its appearance on a portion of this district of the road, which

rendered it necessary to suspend operations for about two weeks, at a time

most favorable for the advancement of the work." But in the summer of

1915 it was weather and accidents that upset time tables. Only the day

after work had recommenced on the drainage structures in Muskingum

County, five supply cars were being towed up the Mt. Sterling hill on the

Culbertson railroad when the coupling between the engine and the first

car broke, releasing all five. The unleashed cars sped down the hill and

over the embankment at the S curve, and came to rest beside the remains

of the Buerhaus automobile, which had crashed at that very spot.41

The supply cars were demolished, and so, too, was the big danger sign

so recently placed there. Smashed by the runaway cars, it was so utterly

destroyed that no piece of it larger than eighteen inches square could be

THE OHIO ROAD EXPERIMENT                                      25

found. "A sight which would make the strongest hearted shudder met the

gaze of those going to the scene Friday morning," wrote the Signal reporter

of the accident. "Side by side lay the five wrecked cars of the Culbertson

company and the body of the Buerhaus machine which went over at this

danger point. Both are monuments to the most dangerous curve on the

pike and one which should undoubtedly be safeguarded and will some day

unquestionably." Fortunately, no one was on the road at the time of the

accident; however, only a few minutes before the cars broke loose, an auto-

mobile and a farmer with a wagon load of hay had both passed by.42

As if this were not enough trouble, that evening, July 15, Zanesville

was deluged with a one-inch rain. The Muskingum and Licking rivers were

booming the next morning, and out at the Culbertson Company's gravel

plant just west of Gant Park, the rain had fallen on a filled gravel bin,

making it so heavy it collapsed and fell upon a nearby crane. Damage to

bin and crane was estimated at $300, in addition to the time taken to

build a new gravel bin.⁴³

In spite of breakdowns and poor weather that continued to hamper

progress, work on the road continued. By August, the cement mixers in

both counties were going full blast, and on September 1, mixer one crossed

the line from Muskingum into Licking County. Two months later the

paving was all but completed. "With good weather Saturday," the Signal

announced on November 12, "¹⁵⁰ feet of concrete which remains to be

poured to complete the paving of the West Pike from Zanesville to Hebron,

Licking county, will be poured and the longest stretch of road work and

the biggest road contract ever completed in Ohio will be practically ready

to turn over to the state highway department." And at last one of the

Signal's prophecies did come true. The next day, mixers one and two met

at station 152-40, and the pavement was completed.44

To celebrate the completion of the road construction, the Zanesville

Chamber of Commerce announced on November 22 that a trade excursion

would be made over the West Pike to Jacksontown and then north to the

city of Newark thirty-five miles away. All autoists were asked to make

the trip and form their own parties. The cars, it was said, would leave

the courthouse at 1 P.M., November 26.⁴⁵

At 12:30 on the appointed day, a fleet of machines, gaily decorated

with bunting and streamers flying expressions of friendship for Newark,

had assembled on Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh streets, and, though

somewhat late in starting, the procession was soon under way with

Charles Baird, enthusiastic autoist, in the pathfinder car. Following

closely behind the pathfinder car was a truck, borrowed from the Wedge

garage, to which a trailer carrying the United Commercial Travelers'

Boosters Band was attached.46

The trip was made almost without incident. The pike was wonderfully

smooth, and to avoid trouble no one was allowed to pass Baird's pathfinder

car, which maintained a steady speed of fifteen to twenty miles per hour

throughout the trip. And because there was always some uncertainty about

THE OHIO ROAD EXPERIMENT                                        27

But the improvement of the West Pike had helped wipe out the old dif-

ferences. "There was a time," editorialized the Signal, "happily buried in

the distant past, when Zanesville and Newark were 'hated rivals.' . . .

However, the rivalry of today is a friendly one and ties of an enduring

friendship have been cemented. Within the past year the two cities have

been linked together by an improved highway and the occasion of Zanes-

ville's first visit to Newark was in celebration of the opening of the new

road. That visit was returned by Newark Thursday, and now that 'the ice

has been broken' it is sincerely hoped that there will be many other inter-

city celebrations of a similar nature."50

But what did the road experiment prove beyond the bettering of

relations between two old enemies? And what did the government have

to show to congress for all the money expended and time spent?

Government experts made two studies of the economic life along the

West Pike, one before the road was paved and one afterwards, and the

differences the new road made were impressive even when allowance is

made for the desire of the statisticians to cast the experiment in as favor-

able a light as possible. Because of the easier pull along the paved road,

for example, the average horse-drawn load increased from 2,324 to 3,290

pounds, and the annual traffic volume from 21,347 tons to 24,245. The

speed of travel also increased some 25 percent, and most significantly, the

cost of hauling was reduced from 28 to 19 cents per ton mile. Moreover,

it was estimated, possibly with some exaggeration, that the value of the

land along the road had increased as much as $7.50 an acre because of the

new road.51

Even more dramatic than these statistics, however, were those col-

lected on the use of motorcars on the new road. In 1915, there were 1,557

automobiles in Muskingum County, 900 of them in Zanesville, and on

almost any Sunday afternoon after the pavement was finished, nearly all

of them seemed to be on the pike. Recording the Sunday drive, a phenom-

enon no longer of special importance in America, the second economic

study revealed that "Sunday traffic on a clear summer day is a steady run

of automobiles in each direction." On one Sunday afternoon, for example,

May 21, 1916, eighty-eight machines passed the village of Amsterdam in

one hour, and this was considered one of the most lightly traveled sections

of the entire road! On such days "old Dobbin," averaging less than five

percent of the traffic, was virtually driven off the road.52

The full meaning of this report, however, can be but dimly appreci-

ated by generations of Americans to whom the automobile has become the

second self. The sheer joy of speeding along a smooth highway at twenty-

five, or possibly thirty, miles an hour, the feel of the wind rushing by and

through the open car, the swift passing of a horse and buggy, and the

trip of perhaps as much as thirty or forty miles from home in one after-

noon can be fully understood only by those Americans who can remember

their first automobile ride and the time when they had never been more

than ten miles away from home before.

28                                                 OHIO HISTORY

But the motor-powered vehicles were being put to important economic

as well as aesthetic uses. Before the West Pike was paved, the villages of

Gratiot and Brownsville were virtually isolated. Gratiot was ten and

Brownsville twelve miles from the Zanesville trade center, a six to

seven hour round trip for the two-horse hack that had been making the

trip three times a week for thirteen years. This was more time than many

farmers could spend away from home and still get back in time to milk

the cows; besides it cost fifty cents each way.53

With the paving of the West Pike, however, an auto truck replaced

the hack. It made two round trips every day, required only one hour each

way, and reduced the price of the trip to forty cents one way and sixty-

five cents round trip. Moreover, a large motor bus was put on the road to

run from Hebron to Zanesville, 26.1 miles, and one could go the entire

distance for seventy-five cents; it made one round a day between Hebron

and Brownsville, and two a day between Zanesville and Brownsville. So

instead of three hack trips a week, Brownsville was connected with Zanes-

ville by four motor trips a day, besides being connected by bus with

Newark.54

The experiment proved one thing more. From it the postmaster gen-

eral and the secretary of agriculture learned that if the federal govern-

ment was to make large contributions for road building within the states,

it must deal only with some state agency, such as a state highway com-

mission. The conflict between Licking County and the state government,

and similar more difficult problems experienced by the government on

other projects, had convinced them that local governments were uncertain

agencies to do business with. "From correspondence and from the atti-

tude of local officials in many places," read a joint report of the post-

master general and the secretary of agriculture, "it appears that there

is a disposition frequently to avoid the obvious requirement of the present

act . . . . The allotments have been looked upon . . . in the light of a

gratuity, and the question has been frequently raised . . . as to why the

government would not give the money to the counties and let them spend

it."55

And so, when the famous federal highway act of 1916 was enacted,

providing money for road building within the states on a dollar matching

basis, it specified that the secretary of agriculture was authorized "to

cooperate with the States, through their respective State highway depart-

ments, in the construction of rural post roads."56

THE AUTHOR: Wayne E. Fuller is a

professor of history at Texas Western

College of the University of Texas, and

the author of the recently published book

RFD: The Changing Face of Rural

America.

70                                                          OHIO HISTORY

Canal, and one of the alleged participants in the syndicate was Charles P. Taft, the

brother of William Howard Taft. These allegations were never satisfactorily proven

and they were regarded by some as a maneuver to embarrass Taft's candidacy for

president. Concerning Bunau-Varilla's activities in Cincinnati, the author has not found

any mention of a member of the Taft family.

39. Wulsin to Bunau-Varilla, February 3, 1902.

40. Taylor to Bunau-Varilla, January 28, 1901.

41. Bunau-Varilla to Mrs. Myron T. Herrick, June 14, 1902.

42. Philippe Bunau-Varilla to Maurice Bunau-Varilla, March 15, 1901.

43. Deering to Bunau-Varilla, March 30, 1901.

44. Bunau-Varilla to Deering, March 30, 1901.

45. Deering to Bunau-Varilla, April 1, 1901.

46. Wulsin to Bunau-Varilla, February 25, 1902.

47. Jacob H. Bromwell to Wulsin, February 26, 1902.

48. Bunau-Varilla to Myron T. Herrick, June 2, 1902.

49. Liberty E. Holden to Bunau-Varilla, June 6, 1902.

50. Bunau-Varilla to Herrick, June 14, 1902.

51. Bunau-Varilla to Wulsin and Taylor, June 21, 1902.

52. Miles P. DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay (Stanford, Calif., 1940), 303.

53. Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 318-319.

54. Ibid., 329-336.

55. DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 327.

56. Ibid., 310, 332.

57. Bunau-Varilla to Loomis, December 31, 1903. Loomis was particularly helpful

in Bunau-Varilla's efforts to secure the recognition of Panama by the nations of the

world.

58. Bunau-Varilla to Taylor and Edward Goepper, November 9, 1903.

59. Bunau-Varilla to Wulsin and Taylor, January 1, 1904.

60. Bunau-Varilla to Taylor, June 11, 1901.

THE OHIO ROAD EXPERIMENT

1. The Signal, December 17, 1914. The bulk of the material for this article was taken

from the National Archives, Washington, D. C. I should like to thank the College Research

Institute of Texas Western College for making my research in Washington, D. C., pos-

sible. Microfilm of the Signal, one of Zanesville's daily newspapers, was made available

to me by the Ohio Historical Society, for which I wish to express my appreciation.

2. Work on the "West Pike" was begun in August 1829. The first section of twenty-one

miles west of Zanesville was substantially finished and opened to regular travel in 1831.

By 1833 work on the remainder was sufficiently advanced to permit mail service over the

whole length of the road, though it was not fully completed until late in 1835. Reports of

the Secretary of War, Senate Executive Documents, 21 cong., 2 sess., No. 17, p. 16; 22

cong., 1 sess., No. 58, p. 2; 23 cong., 1 sess., No. 1, p. 81; 24 cong., 1 sess., No. 1, p. 194.

For vivid descriptions of the old National Road, see the following: Thomas B. Searight,

The Old Pike: A History of the National Road, with Incidents, Accidents, and Anecdotes

Thereon (Uniontown, Pa., 1894); Archer Butler Hulbert, The Cumberland Road (Historic

Highways of America, X, Cleveland, 1904); R. Carlyle Buley, The Old Northwest: Pio-

neer Period, 1815-1840 (Indianapolis, 1950); Philip D. Jordan, The National Road (In-

dianapolis, 1948).

3. Hulbert, The Cumberland Road, 123, 174-187.

4. Jordan, The National Road, 169, 175; see also Senate Executive Documents, 23

cong., 1 sess., No. 1, p. 170.

5. Wayne E. Fuller, "Good Roads and Rural Free Delivery of Mail," Mississippi

Valley Historical Review, XLII (1955), 67-83.

6. Ibid., 81-82; United States Statutes at Large, XXXVII, 551-552.

7. Joint Report of the Progress of Post Road Improvement, no date, Records Relating

to Federal Aid Road Acts, Records of the Post Office Department, Record Group 28,

National Archives (hereafter referred to as Postal Records).

8. State of Ohio certification of money available for post-road improvement, March

20, 1914; Muskingum County certification of money available for post-road improvement,

March 13, 1914; Licking County certification of money available for post-road improve-

ment, March 13, 1914; Second Economic Study, Ohio Post Road, 2 (the date this report

was written is unknown, but the study was made May 11-22, 1916); Clinton Cowen to

L. W. Page, June 5, 1915, all in Correspondence, Reports, and Studies Relating to Post

Roads, Records of the Bureau of Public Roads, Record Group 30, National Archives (all

NOTES                                                                       71

correspondence, reports, and studies referred to hereafter are in these records unless

otherwise noted); see also The Signal, March 18, 1916.

9. The Signal, March 24, 1914.

10. Ibid., March 18, 1914.

11. Ibid., March 20, 1914.

12. Ibid., March 23, 26, April 1, 1914.

13. Cowen to Page, June 5, 1915; Memorandum on the H. E. Culbertson bid; The

Signal, May 11, 1914.

14. Warren Jenkins, The Ohio Gazetteer (Columbus, 1841); First Economic Investiga-

tion, Ohio Post Road, 1-2 (the date this report was written is unknown, but the study was

made November 22-December 4, 1913).

15. From a series of photographs taken of the road in 1913 located in Audio-Visual

Branch, National Achives.

16. Ibid.; First Economic Investigation, Ohio Post Road, 4-5.

17. From photographs in Audio-Visual Branch, National Archives. Christopher Nis-

wanger, whose name appeared on the north wall of the bridge, was the contractor who

built the bridge; James Hampson and David Scott were the road superintendents. See

Senate Executive Documents, 21 cong., 2 sess., No. 17, p. 14, and House Reports, 23 cong.,

1 sess., No. 455, p. 17.

18. From photographs in Audio-Visual Branch, National Archives; see also Jordan,

The National Road, 123, and Hulbert, The Cumberland Road, 162.

19. Senate Executive Documents, 21 cong., 2 sess., No. 17, p. 7; Hulbert, The Cumber-

land Road, 81-82; Charles E. Foote, "The Use of Concrete in the Construction of Roads,"

Scientific American Supplement, No. 1995, LXXVII (1914), 200-201.

20. The Signal, June 1, July 1, 1914.

21. Order and Progress of the Work, no date, 1-3. The date of the beginning of grad-

ing at the Hebron end in this report is May 14, 1915, obviously an error.

22. The Signal, August 4, 27, 1914; Vernon M. Pierce to W. E. Rosengarten, Novem-

ber 19, 1914.

23. Order and Progress of the Work, 1-3; The Signal, August 27, 1914.

24. The Signal, August 27, 1914; Charles C. Moorefield to Pierce, September 5, 1914;

Moorefield to Pierce, August 24, 1914.

25. Order and Progress of the Work.

26. Moorefield to Pierce, October 2, 1914; J. T. Pauls to Moorefield, April 20, 1915.

27. P. J. Wilson to Moorefield, October 10, 1914; Moorefield to Pierce, May 11, 1915.

28. Pauls to Moorefield, April 20, 1915; Robert M. Waid to Moorefield, April 6, 1915;

Order and Progress of the Work.

29. The Signal, April 30, 1915, March 18, 1916; Moorefield to Pierce, no date.

30. William A. Ashbrook to David F. Houston, April 15, 1915.

31. Page to Cowen, May 10, 1915; Cowen to Page, May 12, 1915; Cowen to Page, June

5, 1915.

32. Page to Cowen, June 9, 1915.

33. The Signal, June 15, 1915.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid., and June 16, 1915.

38. Ibid., June 17, 18, 19, 1915.

39. Ibid., July 14, 1915.

40. Order and Progress of the Work.

41. Senate Executive Documents, 23 cong., 2 sess., No. 1, p. 171; The Signal, July 16,

1915.

42. The Signal, July 16, 1915.

43. Ibid.

44. Order and Progress of the Work; The Signal, November 12, 1915.

45. The Signal, November 22, 1915.

46. Ibid., November 26, 1915.

47. Ibid.

48. As quoted in The Signal, November 29, 1915.

49. The Signal, May 18, 1916.

50. Ibid.; and Hulbert, The Cumberland Road, 75-77.

51. Second Economic Study, Ohio Post Road, 11-19.

52. Ibid., 8-10.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid.

55. Joint Report of the Progress of Post Road Improvement, Postal Records.

56. United States Statutes at Large, XXXIX (1916), 355. For the interpretation of

this act, see David F. Houston, "The Government and Good Roads," Review of Reviews,

LIV (1916), 277-280.