On July 4, 1825, as citizens of St. Clairsville in eastern Ohio celebrated the groundbreaking for the National Road, construction also began that same day on the Ohio & Erie Canal at Licking Summit, now Heath in Licking County. Just south of Licking Summit, the National Road and Canal were to intersect, and a group of investors, recognizing the importance of the site, purchased land for the new town of Hebron. By the fall of 1825, businessmen were advertising the sale of town lots. The National Road was completed to Hebron in 1832, and within a year the community had about twenty houses, five stores, and numerous industries, including tanneries, sawmills, warehouses, and distilleries. Few communities in the nation had two such important corridors of travel and commerce: the Canal carried north-south freight and passenger traffic from 1827 to 1861, while the National Road served as a mainstay of east-west transportation for much of the same era. By the end of the Civil War, however, faster and more efficient railroads had pushed both the Road and Canal into decline.