Monroe vetoed this act on the ground that it was an unwarranted extension of the power vested in Congress to make appropriations, “under which power, with the consent of the States through which the road passes, the work was originally commenced, and has so far been executed.”[1] Collection of tolls, the President said, implied a power of jurisdiction or sovereignty which was not granted to the Federal Government by the Constitution and could not be unilaterally conveyed by any State without a constitutional amendment. It was one thing to make appropriations for public improvements, but an entirely different thing to assume jurisdiction and sovereignty over the land whereon those improvements were made.[2] This has been the Federal position on highway grants to the States down to the present day.
Old Cumberland Road approaching Chestnut Ridge Mountains in Pennsylvania about 1899.
Transfer to State Control
In the 10 years following President Monroe’s veto, Congress made occasional and niggardly appropriations for maintaining the Cumberland Road, but these were inadequate to preserve it under ever-increasing traffic[N 1] The supporters of the road finally realized that there was little chance that a Congress bitterly divided over the issue of federally-financed internal improvements would ever make adequate provisions for keeping it in repair. State operation as a toll road seemed to be the only solution to the dilemma, and between 1831 and 1833, the Legislatures of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia agreed to accept and maintain their sections of the National Road. Maryland and Pennsylvania, which had the oldest and worst-worn sections conditioned their acceptance upon the Government’s first putting the road into a good state of repair and erecting toll gates.[6]
The Government spent nearly $800,000 in 1833, 1834, and 1835 for repairing the road east of the Ohio River, the work being done under the supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers. This work was principally rebuilding the pavement according to McAdams’ method, adding broken stone to replenish the wear of traffic. As soon as each section was reconstructed, the States assumed jurisdiction and maintenance. By the end of 1835 the National Road, from Cumberland to the Ohio-Indiana line, was national no longer.
- ↑ For the years 1823 to 1827, a total of $55,000 was appropriated for repairs, an average of only $88 per mile per year—hardly enough to keep the ditches open.[3] An idea of the traffic can be had from the fact that in 1822 one of the five commission houses at Wheeling unloaded 1,081 wagons, averaging 3,500 pounds of freight each, and the annual total freight bill from Baltimore to Wheeling was estimated at $390,000.[4] In addition, hundreds of stagecoaches and private vehicles used the road daily. Nineteen thousand pigs were driven over the road in 1831, some in droves of 600 animals.[5]
Westward Extension of the National Road
As soon as the Cumberland Road reached the Ohio River, there was agitation to extend it westward through Ohio and the newly-admitted States of Indiana and Illinois. These States, like Ohio, had provisions in their acts of admission for setting aside 2 percent of the income from sales of public lands for road improvements.
In 1820 Congress appropriated $10,000 for laying out a road between Wheeling and the left bank of the Mississippi River. However, the road did not officially get under way until 1825, when Congress made another appropriation to start construction and to extend the surveys to the permanent seat of government in Missouri, passing through the seats of government of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.[7] Thereafter, the Government spent slightly over $4 million to push the road as far west as Vandalia, then the capital of Illinois.
From Wheeling to Vandalia the road was laid out with Roman straightness in an 80-foot right-of-way, but except in eastern Ohio, it did not approach the high construction standard of the Cumberland Road east of the Ohio River. This was partly because of
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