The National Road crosses six states from Baltimore, Maryland, to East St. Louis, Illinois, fulfilling the ambitions of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson for an all-weather route across the Allegheny Mountains that would connect the Eastern Seaboard with the Midwest. Conceived by Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury under Thomas Jefferson, and authorized by Congress in 1806, it became the nation’s first federally funded interstate highway and opened the West to the movement of people and goods. Construction began in 1811 at Cumberland, Maryland, extending an earlier route from Baltimore; by 1818 it reached the Ohio River, by 1833 it was completed to Columbus, Ohio, and by 1850 it extended west to Vandalia, Illinois. The road became an engineering marvel of graceful stone arch bridges over streams and rivers, with inns and taverns built to serve travelers, and many of those bridges and buildings still survive in towns along its path. Much of the historic route remains part of U.S. Route 40, while several original segments are no longer used as highways but can still be explored. Its longest section lies in Ohio, stretching 237 miles from Bridgeport eastward to the Indiana state line on the west.