The Evening Missourian. [volume] (Columbia, Mo.) 1917-1920, 1918-08-14
THE EVENING MISSOURIAN
THE OLD TRAILS ROAD

international daily newspaper pub
Iished at Boston, in discussing trans
continental highways, comments upor
the Old Trails Road and road-makins
in this wise:
"The widespread movement for good
roads in the United States has its fit
ting elimination in the development
of the so-called transcOntinental
roads. But the Ocean-to-Ocean high
ways cover a peculiar secret that
from time immemOnal there has eX-
listed a path, or paths, across the
american continent. Coronado, alone,
must have gained some inkling of the
circumstance when he travelled out of
Mexico in search Of the Seven Golden
Cities Of Cibola in the present New
Mexico and managed to reach the
neighbOIhCOd of the modern Omaha.
The maker of these thOrOughfares
was Of course neither the Red In
dian nor his fOrerunners; nor can
nature altogether claim the credit for
their construction" The real build
er" was the first American engineer,
the migrating buffalo. assisted by the
elk and the deer. Hoofs stamped out
the old trails which the Jim Bridgers
and the Kit CarsOns and the later piO
neers. going west, found scanning the
continent, and the Indians could only
follow in the tracks which the ami
mails had made. Instinct led these
animals to the ridge road, the direct
road, the safest fords and the noun
tain passes.
"In the advancement of civilization.
the road and the schoOlmaster are the
two greatest forces, said Charles
Sumner. The leaders of the young
American nation needed no reminder
OF this truism. George Washington,
who blazed a military trail which Gen
eral Braidock in part followed, was
in the truest sense not merely the Fa-
ther of his Country. but the virtual
Father of the West, since the COM
mercial and political linking of the
then limited East with the great and
unlimited West, was perhaps one OF
the most dominant factors of his ca
rCer. His example seemed to offer
just the inspiration necessary to other
statesmen, and the old National or
Cumberland Road. the idea of which
was crystallized into law by Thomas
jefferson in 1906, became the natural
extension of the Washington scheme.
Stretching from Cumberland to st.
Louis. it reached the then frontier of
civilization as our grandmothers
knew it.
Before it could reach the true
plains of Kansas, however, trails had
to be traversed through the Missouri
wilderness for nearly 200 miles. In
those formative years, two sons of the
famous pioneer. Daniel Boone, were
making salt at the buffalo salt-lick in
the wilderness of Central Missouri.
They evapOrated the salt in kettles
and, sealing it in hollow logs, fioated
it down to St Louis. Out of this traf-
fic sprang the next link in the trans
continental chain, the BOOn's Lick
Road. From that time on began the
prairie commerce westward, until it
gradually developed into the Santa Fe
trade along the Santa Fe trail, which
started at the little pioneer outfit town
of Old Franklin and later at Indepen-
dence. Thus, out of several fugitive
trips made across the plains from Kan
sas City to Santa Fe, was inaugurated
the modern system of the transcOn-
tinental highways. The route of the
Oregon trail, which succeeded that OF
the Santa Fe trail, was an offshCOt.
"Transcontinental highways, COM
plete and incomplete, projected or
about to be projected, together with
their essential links, now seam the
modern road maps of the United
States. Westerners by the hundreds
are devoting their spare energies to
organizing and booming the trails and
roads, to tracing and logging and lay
ing out the ancient tracks, to widening
and furnishing and Transforming them
from primitive dirt into gravel or up
tO-date concrete or macadam. It does
not matter whether the thoroughfare
is a connecting link in a great North
to-South or East-to-West system. 1t
does not matter whether it has a con-
tinental significance or whether it
lead to a farmers pump. Nothing will
satisfy the true transcOntinental road
enthusiast until it has received a re-
sounding name, until it has been
dubbed a Blue. or a Red or a Yellow
road. or named after a flower or a
statesman. until it has been signpOsted
with boards and diagrams and all
kinds If special and original designa-