America's entry into World War I quickly demonstrated the need for a national network of roads. To reduce the burden on overloaded railroads, the Council for National Defense recommended that military trucks travel overland to the East Coast. Despite its poor condition, the National Road was selected as a strategic route for transport of war material. To ready it for the heavily loaded trucks, the State of Ohio used prison labor to pave more than 75 miles with brick manufactured in Massillon and Zanesville. At the time, it was the longest continuous stretch of brick pavement in America, and remnants of the original brick-paved National Road can still be seen adjacent to present-day U.S. Route 40 in eastern Ohio. Ohio's brick-paving industry thrived for 50 years, from the 1880s to the 1930s, drawing on rich deposits of shale and fireclays needed for brick production. By 1893, 44 different companies were producing paving bricks, with an annual output of about 292 million bricks, enough to pave approximately 600 miles of road, since about 500,000 bricks were needed to pave a single mile of roadway 25 feet in width. A typical paving brick measured 9 inches by 4 inches and weighed about 10 pounds, making it larger than conventional building brick so it would better resist weather, traffic, and wear. In 1910, Steubenville city officials noted that their brick-paved streets had cost less than $1.00 in repairs since they were laid in 1884.
