The Fox Creek "S" Bridge was one of a series of such bridges along the National Road, and only a handful survived the construction of U.S. Route 40. The National Road, completed here in 1828, opened wide the doors to the West, and every township crossed by the road doubled its population in a decade. The entire National Road from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois, was bricked during World War I to accommodate military traffic, and the Fox Creek "S" Bridge was the last section to be bricked, an event recorded in 1919. The house at the top left of that scene belonged to Robert West Speer, a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Speer was a Reformed Presbyterian, or Covenanter, and his denomination, along with the Associate Presbyterians, or Seceders, and the Associate Reformed Presbyterians, made the Fox Creek and Crooked Creek area a bastion of abolitionism before and during the Civil War.

Photo: Allen C. Browne

Photo: Allen C. Browne

Photo: Allen C. Browne

Photo: Allen C. Browne

Photo: Allen C. Browne

Photo: Allen C. Browne

New Concord, Ohio · USA