In 1828 Joseph Shriver surveyed the National Road from Indiana to Vandalia, the Illinois capital, and found little more than wilderness between the Wabash and Kaskaskia rivers. By the mid-1830s, the road had spawned settlements in Illinois and linked Vandalia to river ports, county seats, and other state capitals, but political disagreements over funding and federal ownership troubled it from the beginning. In 1840, with the road unfinished in Illinois, the U.S. Senate voted against further federal appropriations. In 1843, the Illinois General Assembly authorized counties to repair and preserve the National Road, and counties, communities, and private companies improved the existing alignment and ultimately extended it to East St. Louis, Ill., where it met the Mississippi River. In 1926, the National Road became part of US 40, an all-weather highway stretching from Atlantic City, N.J., to San Franciso, Calif., and although US 40 was later eclipsed by the interstate system, it continued to serve as a corridor for travel, commerce, and community. Vandalia resident Col. William C. Greenup, Illinois' first superintendent of construction for the National Road, also sought in 1838 to bolster the city as the capital's relocation approached through the Kaskaskia River Navigation Company, but that venture failed because the river channel could not support steamboat traffic.