# Historic Highways of America/Volume 11/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III
ZANE'S TRACE AND THE MAYSVILLE PIKE
IN the study of the Ohio River as a highway of immigration and commerce it was emphasized that in earliest pioneer days the ascent of the river was a serious and difficult problem. This was true, indeed, not on the Ohio alone, but on almost every river of importance in the United States. Of course brawny arms could force a canoe through flood-tides and rapids; but, as a general proposition, the floods of winter, with ice floating fast amid-stream and clinging in ragged blocks and floes along the shore, and the droughts of summer which left, even in the Ohio, great bars exposed so far to the light that the river could be forded here and there by children, made even canoe navigation well-nigh impossible. For other craft than light canoes navigation was utterly out of the question in the dry seasons and ​exceedingly dangerous on the icy winter floods at night—when the shore could not be approached.
Such conditions as these gave origin to many of our land highways. Where pioneer homes were built beside a navigable river it was highly important to have a land thoroughfare leading back to the "old settlements" which could be traversed at all seasons. Many of our "river roads" came into existence, not because the valleys offered the easiest courses for land travel, but because pioneer settlements were made on river banks, and, as the rivers were often worthy of the common French name "Embarras," land courses were necessary. In the greater rivers this "homeward track," so to speak, frequently abandoned the winding valley and struck straight across the interior on the shortest available route.
The founding of Kentucky in the lower Ohio Valley offers a specific instance to illustrate these generalizations, and brings us to the subject of a thoroughfare which was of commanding importance in the old West. We have elsewhere dealt at length ​with the first settlement of Kentucky, making clear the fact that the great road blazed by Boone through Cumberland Gap was the most important route in Kentucky's early history. The growth of the importance of the Ohio River as a thoroughfare and its final tremendous importance to Kentucky and the entire West has also been reviewed. But, despite this importance, the droughts of summer and the ice-torrents of winter made a landward route from Kentucky to Pennsylvania and the East an absolute necessity. Even when the river was navigable, the larger part of the craft which sailed it before 1820 were not capable of going up-stream. Heavy freight could be "poled" and "cordelled" up in the keel-boat and barge, but for all other return traffic, both freight and passenger, the land routes from Kentucky north and east were preferable. For many years the most available messenger and mail route from Cincinnati, Vincennes, and Louisville was over Boone's Wilderness Road through Cumberland Gap. But, as the eighteenth century neared its close, the large population of western Pennsylvania and north​western Virginia made necessary better routes from the upper Ohio Valley across the Alleghenies; in turn, the new conditions demanded a route up the Ohio Valley from Kentucky to Pennsylvania.
In our survey of Indian Thoroughfares, a slight path known as the Mingo Trail is mentioned as leading across eastern Ohio from Mingo Bottom near the present Steubenville, on the Ohio River, to the neighborhood of Zanesville on the Muskingum River. Mingo Bottom was a well-known Indian camping-place; the name is preserved in the railway junction thereabouts, Mingo Junction. A distinct watershed offers thoroughfare southwesterly across to the Muskingum, and on this lay the old trail. The termini of this earliest known route were near two early settlements of whites; Mingo Bottom lies eight or nine miles north of Wheeling, one of the important stations in the days of border warfare. The Mingo Trail, swinging southward a little, became the route of white hunters and travelers who wished to ​cross what is now eastern Ohio. The Muskingum River terminus of the trail was Wills Town, as far down the Muskingum from Zanesville as Mingo Bottom was above Wheeling on the Ohio. It is altogether probable that a slight trace left the Wills Town trail and crossed the Muskingum at the mouth of Licking River—the present site of Zanesville. If a trail led thence westwardly toward the famed Pickaway Plains, it is recorded on none of our maps. We know, therefore, of only the Mingo Trail, running, let us say loosely, from Wheeling, West Virginia, to Zanesville, Ohio, which could have played any part in forming what soon became known as the first post road in all the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio.
With the close of the Indian War and the signing of the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, the American possession of the Northwest was placed beyond question. A flood of emigrants at once left the eastern states for the Central West, and the return traffic, especially in the form of travelers and private mail packets, from Kentucky and Cincinnati, began at once to assume ​significant proportions, and Congress was compelled to facilitate travel by opening a post route two hundred and twenty-six miles in length from the upper to the lower Ohio. Accordingly, the following act: "An Act to authorize Ebenezer Zane to locate certain lands in the territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio" was passed by Congress and approved May 17, 1796:
"Be it enacted, &c., That, upon the conditions hereinafter mentioned, there shall be granted to Ebenezer Zane three tracts of land, not exceeding one mile square each, one on the Muskingum river, one on Hockhocking river, and one other on the north bank of Scioto river, and in such situations as shall best promote the utility of a road to be opened by him on the most eligible route between Wheeling and Limestone, ​to be approved by the President of the United States, or such person as he shall appoint for that purpose; Provided, Such tracts shall not interfere with any existing claim, location, or survey; nor include any salt spring, nor the lands on either side of the river Hockhocking at the falls thereof.
"Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That upon the said Zane's procuring, at his own expense, the said tracts to be surveyed, in such a way and manner as the President of the United States shall approve, and returning into the treasury of the United States plats thereof, together with warrents granted by the United States for military land bounties, to the amount of the number of acres contained in the said three tracts; and also, producing satisfactory proof, by the first day of January next, that the aforesaid road is opened, and ferries established upon the rivers aforesaid, for the accommodation of travellers, and giving security that such ferries shall be ​maintained during the pleasure of Congress; the President of the United States shall be, and he hereby is, authorized and empowered to issue letters patent, in the name and under the seal of the United States, thereby granting and conveying to the said Zane, and his heirs, the said tracts of land located and surveyed as aforesaid; which patents shall be countersigned by the secretary of state, and recorded in his office: Provided always, That the rates of ferriage, at such ferries, shall, from time to time, be ascertained [inspected] by any two of the judges of the territory northwest of the river Ohio, or such other authority as shall be appointed for that purpose.
"Approved May 17, 1796."
Zane evidently went at once to work opening the road to Kentucky, his brother Jonathan, and son-in-law John McIntire, assisting largely in the work. The path was only made fit for horsemen, particularly mail-carriers. It is probable that the ​task was not more difficult than to cut away small trees on an Indian trace. It is sure that for a greater part of the distance from the Ohio to the Muskingum the Mingo Trail was followed, passing near the center of Belmont, Guernsey and Muskingum Counties. The route to the southwest from that point through Perry, Fairfield, Pickaway, Ross, Richland, Adams, and Brown Counties may or may not have followed the path of an Indian trace. No proof to the contrary being in existence, it is most reasonable to suppose that this, like most other pioneer routes, did follow a more or less plainly outlined Indian path. The new road crossed the Muskingum at the present site of the town well named Zanesville, the Hocking at Lancaster, the Scioto at Chillicothe, and the Ohio at Aberdeen, Ohio, opposite the old-time Limestone, Kentucky.
Bridge on which Zane's Trace Crossed the Muskingum River at Zanesville, Ohio
​which was just then commenced. We encamped one night at Massie's run, say two or three miles from the falls of Paint creek, where the trace then crossed that stream. From Chillicothe to Lancaster the trace then went through the Pickaway plains. There was a cabin some three or four miles below the plains, and another at their eastern edge, and one or two more between that and Lancaster. Here we staid the third night. From Lancaster we went next day to Zanesville, passing several small beginnings. I recollect no improvement between Zanesville and Wheeling, except a small one at the mouth of Indian Wheeling creek, opposite to Wheeling. In this space we camped another night. From Wheeling we went home pretty well."
The matter of ferriage was a most important item on pioneer roads as indicated by the Act of Congress quoted. The Court of General Quarter Sessions met at Adamsville, Adams County, December 12, 1797, and made the following the legal rates of ferriage across the Scioto and Ohio Rivers, both of which Zane's Trace crossed:
No sooner was Zane's Trace opened than the Government established a mail route between Wheeling and Maysville and Lexington. For the real terminus of the trace was not by any means at little Maysville; an ancient buffalo route and well-worn white man's road led into the interior of Kentucky from Maysville, known in history as the Maysville Road and Maysville Pike. On the Ohio side this mail route from Wheeling and Lexington was known by many titles in many years; it was the Limestone Road, the Maysville Pike, the Limestone and Chillicothe Road, and the Zanesville Pike; the Maysville and Zanes​ville Turnpike was constructed between Zanesville and the Ohio River. At Zanesville the road today is familiarly known as the Maysville Pike while in Kentucky it is commonly called the Zanesville Pike.
"When the Indian trail gets widened, graded and bridged to a good road," wrote Emerson, "there is a benefactor, there is a missionary, a pacificator, a wealth-bringer, a maker of markets, a vent for industry." The little road here under consideration is unique among American highways in its origin and in its history. It was demanded, not by war, but by civilization, not for exploration and settlement but by settlements that were already made and in need of communion and commerce. It was created by an act of Congress as truly as the Cumberland Road, which soon should, in part, supersede it. And finally it was on the subject of the Maysville Turnpike that the question of internal improvement by the national government was at last decided when, in 1830, President Jackson signed that veto which ​made the name of Maysville a household word throughout the United States.
In 1825, after a delay which created great suspense in the West, the Cumberland Road at last leaped the Ohio River at Wheeling. Zane's Trace, now a wide, much-traveled avenue, offered a route westward to Zanesville which could be but little improved upon. The blazed tree gave way to the mile-stone and the pannier and saddle-bag to the rumbling stagecoach and the chaise. It is all a pretty, quiet picture and its story is totally unlike that of Boone's rough path over the Cumberlands. For settlements sprang up rapidly in this land of plenty; we have seen that there were beginnings at Chillicothe and Zanesville when Sample passed this way in 1797. By 1800, Zane's lots at the crossing of the Hockhocking (first known as New Lancaster, and later as Lancaster—from the town of that name in Pennsylvania) were selling; his terms and inducements to settlers, especially mechanics, are particularly interesting.
​As intimated, the Kentucky division of the Maysville Pike—leading from the Ohio River through Washington, Paris, and Lexington—became famous in that it was made a test case to determine whether or not the Government had the right to assist in the building of purely state (local) roads by taking shares in local turnpike companies.
This much-mooted question was settled once for all by President Andrew Jackson's veto of "A Bill Authorizing a subscription of stock in the Maysville, Washington, Paris, and Lexington Turnpike Road Company," which was passed by the House February 24, 1830. It read: "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to subscribe, in the name and for the use of the United States, for fifteen hundred shares of the capital stock of the Maysville, Washington, Paris, and Lexington Turnpike Road Company, and to pay ​for the same at such times, and in such proportions, as shall be required of, and paid by, the stockholders generally, by the rules and regulations of the aforesaid company, to be paid out of any money in the Treasury, not otherwise appropriated: Provided, That not more than one-third part of the sum, so subscribed for the use of the United States, shall be demanded in the present year, nor shall any greater sum be paid on the shares so subscribed for, than shall be proportioned to assessments made on individual or corporate stockholders.
"Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That the said Secretary of the Treasury shall vote for the President and Directors of the aforesaid company, according to such number of shares as the United States may, at any time, hold in the stock thereof, and shall receive upon the said stock the proportion of the tolls which shall, from time to time, be due to the United States for the shares aforesaid, and shall have and enjoy, in behalf of the United States, every other right of stockholder in said Company."
​In his first annual message to Congress, dated December 8, 1829, President Jackson stated plainly his attitude to the great question of internal improvements. "As . . the period approaches when the application of the revenue to the payment of [national] debt will cease, the disposition of the surplus will present a subject for the serious deliberation of Congress. . . Considered in connection with the difficulties which have heretofore attended appropriations for purposes of internal improvement, and with those which this experience tells us will certainly arise whenever power over such subjects may be exercised by the General Government, it is hoped that it may lead to the adoption of some plan which will reconcile the diversified interests of the States and strengthen the bonds which unite them. . . To avoid these evils it appears to me that the most safe, just, and federal disposition which could be made of the surplus revenue would be its apportionment among the several States according to their ratio of representation, and should this measure not be found warranted by the Constitution that it would be expedient to ​propose to the States an amendment authorizing it."
In his veto of the Maysville Road bill President Jackson quoted the above paragraphs from his annual message, and, after citing both Madison's and Monroe's positions as to internal improvements of pure local character, continues:
"The bill before me does not call for a more definate opinion upon the particular circumstances which will warrent appropriations of money by Congress to aid works of internal improvement, for although the extention of the power to apply money beyond that of carrying into effect the object for which it is appropriated has, as we have seen, been long claimed and exercised by the Federal Government, yet such grants have always been professedly under the control of the general principle that the works which might be thus aided should be 'of a general, not local, national, not State,' character. A disregard of this distinction would of necessity lead to the subversion of the federal system. That ​even this is an unsafe one, arbitrary in its nature, and liable, consequently, to great abuses, is too obvious to require the confirmation of experience. It is, however, sufficiently definate and imperative to my mind to forbid my approbation of any bill having the character of the one under consideration. I have given to its provisions . . reflection . . but I am not able to view it in any other light than as a measure of purely local character; or, if it can be considered national, that no further distinction between the appropriate duties of the General and State Governments need be attempted, for there can be no local interest that may not with equal propriety be denominated national. It has no connection with any established system of improvements; is exclusively within the limits of a State, starting at a point on the Ohio River and running out 60 miles to an interior town, and even as far as the State is interested conferring partial instead of general advantages.
"Considering the magnitude and importance of the power, and the embarrassments to which, from the very nature of the ​thing, its exercise must necessarily be subjected, the real friends of internal improvement ought not to be willing to confide it to accident and chance. What is properly national in its character or otherwise is an inquiry which is often extremely difficult of solution. . .
"If it be the wish of the people that the construction of roads and canals should be conducted by the Federal Government, it is not only highly expedient, but indispensably necessary, that a previous amendment of the Constitution, delegating the necessary power and defining and restricting its exercise with reference to the sovereignty of the States, should be made. The right to exercise as much jurisdiction as is necessary to preserve the works and to raise funds by the collection of tolls to keep them in repair can not be dispensed with. The Cumberland Road should be an instructive admonition of the consequences of acting without this right. Year after year contests are witnessed, growing out of efforts to obtain the necessary appropriations for completing and repairing this useful work. Whilst ​one Congress may claim and exercise the power, a succeeding one may deny it; and this fluctuation of opinion must be unavoidably fatal to any scheme which from its extent would promote the interests and elevate the character of the country. . .
"That a constitutional adjustment of this power upon equitable principles is in the highest degree desirable can scarcely be doubted, nor can it fail to be promoted by every sincere friend to the success of our political institutions."
The effect of Jackson's veto was far-reaching. It not only put an end to all thought of national aid to such local improvements as the Maysville Turnpike, but deprived such genuinely national promotions as the Baltimore and Ohio Railway of all hope of national aid. "President Jackson had strongly expressed his opposition to aiding state enterprises and schemes of internal improvement by appropriations from the central government," records a historian of that great enterprise; "from whatever source the opposition may have come, the [Baltimore and Ohio Railway] ​company recognized that it must not hope for aid from the national government." The significance of Jackson's veto could not be more strongly presented.
* ↑ Historic Highways of America, vol. ii, p. 109.
* ↑ The patriot-pioneer of Wheeling, the first settlement on the Ohio River below Pittsburg, which he founded in 1769, and where he lived until 1811. He was born in Virginia in 1747.
* ↑ The importance of the historic entrepôt Limestone, Mason County, Kentucky (later named Maysville from one of its first inhabitants) has been suggested in Volume IX of this series (pp. 70, 89, 128). It was the most important entrance point into Kentucky on its northeastern river shore-line. What it was in earliest days, because of the buffalo trail into the interior, it remained down through the earlier and later pioneer era to the time of the building of the trunk railway lines.
* ↑ United States Statutes at Large, Private Laws 1789–1845, inclusive, p. 27.
* ↑ American Pioneer, vol. i, p. 158.
* ↑ An exaggerated statement, yet much in accord with the truth, as we have previously observed.
* ↑ County seat of Adams County, Ohio
* ↑ Evans and Stivers, History of Adams County, Ohio, p. 125.
* ↑ Wilcoxon's clearing, Sinking Spring, Highland County, Ohio.—Id., p. 125.
* ↑ Id., p. 88.
* ↑ Society and Solitude, essay on "Civilization," pp. 25–26.
* ↑ See Graham's History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio, pp. 133–134.
* ↑ Bills & Resolutions, House Reps., 1st Sess., 21st Cong., Part 2, 1829 & '30, H. R., p. 285.
* ↑ Richardson's Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol. ii, pp. 451, 452.
* ↑ Id., pp. 483–493.
* ↑ Reizenstein's "The Economic History of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad," Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical and Political Science, fifteenth series, vii–viii, p. 23.
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