The National Road, conceived by George Washington, authorized by Thomas Jefferson, and traveled by Abraham Lincoln, was approved by the U.S. Congress in 1806 to open the western interior of the young nation to commerce and settlement as America’s first federally funded interstate highway, extending from Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheeling on the Ohio River. Its importance led Congress in 1824 to authorize its extension into Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to link the capitals of the new states, and it reached Indiana in 1827. During its Indiana heyday from 1830 to 1850, travelers flooded the road, using it as a convenient route to markets east and west while blacksmith shops and taverns served a diverse stream of stagecoaches, carriages, wagons, foot travelers, and livestock. Stagecoaches carried letters, newspapers, cash, and personal correspondence tied to accomplishments, births, and deaths, even as travel was often miserable, with mud, wet clothes, and rough rides. As rail and canal networks expanded in the 1850s, road traffic declined and the National Road fell into disrepair, though its legacy endured. The automobile revived the road in the 1920s, and in 1926 the old National Road became U.S. Route 40, one of the first routes designated under the new federal highway numbering system and a transcontinental highway from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to San Francisco, California. Gas stations, diners, and motels brought a new era of prosperity, and until the 1970s, U.S. 40 remained one of the country’s primary east-west routes before Interstate 70 assumed that role. In 2002 the U.S. Secretary of Transportation designated the Historic National Road from Maryland to Illinois an All-American Road. In Indiana, preservation efforts continue along the corridor, including the 1841 Huddleston Farmhouse in Cambridge City, and the road’s later transportation legacy also included the rise of Studebaker, whose Indiana blacksmith shop became the Studebaker Manufacturing Company in 1868 and ultimately transitioned from wagons to electric and gasoline-powered cars.