William C. Greenup co-founded this village in 1834, when the surrounding land was wilderness, and as Illinois superintendent of the National Road he recognized the promise of the area beside America’s highway. The road he helped build became a corridor for American culture, politics, and trade, but by 1850 its standing as the fastest route between East and West was ending as the nation turned in the 1850s from coach, wagon, and water travel to rail, whose speed, convenience, and reliability drew traffic away and left the National Road neglected and in disrepair. Greenup was reached by the St. Louis, Vandalia and Terre Haute Railroad in 1868 and by the Grayville and Mattoon line in 1872. After automobiles became affordable and vehicle ownership surged, a national movement for better roads followed; by 1919 America had more than 7.5 million vehicles, and in 1926 the National Road became part of U.S. 40, a transcontinental highway from Atlantic City, N.J., to San Francisco, Calif. By 1940 U.S. 40 had become a well-marked, all-weather highway still in use today. The National Road itself began with federal funding legislation signed by President Thomas Jefferson in 1806; surveyed from Cumberland, Md., to the Mississippi River, it carried pioneers westward, and in Illinois today, as U.S. 40, it spans 164 miles from Indiana to East St. Louis.