Westward Ho!

Not very original. Finally started on my latest adventure in late morning, after packing the car. And it is packed! Full! I brought East with me everything I thought I might possibly need for 6 to 8 months. And I have even shipped home half a dozen boxes already. Friend Annette says it looks like a body in the back seat, because I have plastic tablecloths covering the boxes and clothes bags piled up almost to the top of the seatback.

I spent 3 or 4 days planning out my route, so I could estimate when I might arrive in Salt Lake City and meet my mother to tour southwest Utah. Scheduling difficulties have already changed this plan, so she might meet me in Omaha for the trip through Nebraska and on to San Francisco. Trouble is, I want don’t want to miss anything interesting along the way. Annette thinks I may have to spend the winter in Nebraska if I follow this itinerary. I have been enjoying her hospitality for 3 weeks, and you know what they say about guests after only 3 days. A true friend!

I travelled less than 300 miles on my first day, to Wheeling, West Virginia, but managed to go through bits of 4 states: Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, as well as West Virginia, to the edge of Ohio. For now, will be following I-70, with only a few detours. Crossed the Monongahela River and went through the old “Wheeling Tunnel”, one of many old tunnels going through these hills. Wheeling is right on the Ohio River, a truly depressed town, trying hard to make a comeback, showing off its restored Victorian Houses. Also very proud of being on “The Historic National Road.”

The Historic National Road is the latest name for “The National Road,” the nation’s first federally funded interstate highway. I’m sure they didn’t think of it exactly like that when it was first authorized in 1806 (not 1906). And then it was called the Cumberland Road, because construction started in Cumberland, MD in 1811, extending an existing road from Baltimore. It was to connect Maryland, Pennsylvania, what is now West Virginia (then still part of Virginia), Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. West of Wheeling, the route continued on the path of Zane’s Trace, the first road in Ohio. (Wheeling was founded by Ebenezer Zane in 1793.) The Road incorporated many earlier Indian trails and Colonial routes. It fostered the growth of inns and stagecoach lines along the route. The Road reached Wheeling in 1818, then to Vandalia, Illinois, the western end of the road, in 1839. Much later it was completed to East St. Louis, linking it to the Mississippi River. In the 1920s and 1930s it was incorporated as part of U.S. Route 40. After Interstate 70 was constructed under the limted-access interstate highway system authorized in 1956, US 40 was bypassed and became a secondary or scenic road. Many of the bypassed towns withered, like the ones on the old Route 66 out west.