The National Road Crosses Indiana

Washington Street runs due east and west through the heart of Indianapolis, and for much of its length it is the same road that connected the young United States from Cumberland, Maryland to the Illinois border. Congress authorized the National Road, the first federally funded highway in American history, in eighteen oh six. By eighteen thirty-six, construction had reached the eastern edge of Indianapolis. The road followed Washington Street through the city's center, crossed the White River on a covered bridge, and continued west toward Terre Haute, reaching there in eighteen thirty-eight.

The National Road transformed Indianapolis from an isolated interior capital into a point on a continental line. Before it arrived, reaching Indianapolis from the Ohio border meant negotiating forest tracks that turned to mud in rain and froze in winter. After it arrived, wagons and stagecoaches moved on a graded stone surface. Taverns opened along it. Drovers moved livestock on it. Mail coaches ran a regular schedule. The road was what the White River had promised to be and never was: a reliable connection to everywhere else.

In eighteen twenty-five, at the urging of Indiana's congressional delegation, the route was adjusted specifically to pass through Indianapolis rather than bypassing it to the north. That adjustment meant Washington Street. It meant the covered bridge over the White River. It meant that the capital city, which had struggled in its early years to justify its location, suddenly sat on the main artery of American westward movement.

When the automobile era arrived, the National Road became United States Route Forty, one of the first federal highways. The route is the same. The road that once carried Conestoga wagons still runs through the center of Indianapolis, past the same grid Alexander Ralston drew in eighteen twenty-one.