In the 1820s, near Mulberry Grove, passengers could board a stagecoach traveling west to Alton, Illinois, or east to the Illinois Capitol at Vandalia. Local lore held that when travelers waited at the town tavern for a coach, the proprietor sent a child to watch the roadside and shake a rag when the coach came into view so the driver would stop. By 1841, when Francis Gill platted Mulberry Grove, the National Road had become a fixed cross-country route carrying passengers, raw materials, merchandise, and mail from Maryland to the Mississippi River by way of the Shake Rag stop. Until the early 1900s, roads remained rough dirt tracks through timber, marsh, and prairie, and many rural residents hesitated to make the long trip to town. Mulberry Grove merchants responded by loading wagons with goods and traveling to remote farms and households, sometimes twice a week, through places known as Hog Back, Chicken Bristle, Cracker's Neck, and Lost Nation. In spring, wheels bogged down in mud, in summer they raised dust, and travel was difficult and often treacherous, even on the National Road. The National Road itself began with federal funding authorized by President Thomas Jefferson in 1806 and was surveyed from Cumberland, Maryland, to the Mississippi River as a highway for pioneers moving west.