Settlers had been moving west since the early 1700's, and by 1802 enough farms and towns had been established in the Ohio Valley that residents sought statehood, yet rough wilderness tracks left the growing western settlements poorly connected to the eastern centers of business and government. In 1805 a proposal went before Congress for a road from Cumberland, Maryland, to the Ohio River, and in 1806 Congress passed the bill and President Thomas Jefferson appointed surveyors to lay out the route through the Allegheny Mountains and beyond. Officially called the Cumberland Road, it soon became known as the National Pike, the Great Turnpike, the Old Pike, and most enduringly the National Road, the only road ever built directly by the federal government. Construction began in 1811, the road reached the Ohio River at Wheeling in 1818, and calls then arose to continue it across Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois toward the Mississippi River; by about 1839 it had reached Vandalia, Illinois, where lack of money and political disputes stopped further extension, though roads already continued west to Saint Louis and Alton. In its busiest years it was the nation's principal east-west route, carrying pioneers, stagecoaches, carriages, Conestoga wagons loaded with freight, and droves of cattle and sheep along six hundred miles through six states, while inns, taverns, and towns grew up beside it. In the mid 1800's railroads, being faster, more comfortable, and cheaper, reduced its importance, and the road declined into mainly local use as maintenance increasingly passed to the states. Early in the 1900's the automobile revived the route and helped spur the Good Roads Movement, and the old road became part of a national highway network as U.S. Route 40, while its original section from Baltimore, Maryland, to East Saint Louis, Illinois, was later designated an All-American Road and marked as the Historic National Road. A timeline of related events links the road to the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark, federal surveys and appropriations, tollgates, bridges at Brownsville and Wheeling, the rise of railroads, the growth of bicycles and automobiles, paving in Illinois, redesigns and bypasses, and later preservation efforts. At this site, survey notes by engineer Joseph Shriver record work in 1828 between Terre Haute and Saint Louis, including camps, measurements, crossings near Clear Creek, Hock's Creek, and the Embarrass River, observations on soil, timber, and stone, and examination of a river crossing. Local history also connects the area to Thomas Lincoln's family travels in 1830 and 1831 and to visits by Abraham Lincoln in 1832 and 1847, including traditions that he assisted near the inn and bridge site and later visited the bridge area during a legal case in Greenup.