According to Webster’s Dictionary, a road is “a way made for traveling between places.” However, the Old National Road was a road to nowhere, or so it was two centuries ago. President George Washington imagined it. President Thomas Jefferson prodded Congress to fund it. Men with hand tools, horsepower and imagination built it.

It later would be called “The Road that Built a Nation,” an original interstate highway that would extend from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois. “Old National” opened sections of Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois to pioneers, many of whom would continue on across the Mississippi River to develop the West.

In years to come a few sections were relocated for a short distance, the route renamed US 40, then became secondary to Interstate 70. It remains, however, as a national treasure, a pleasure to travel, each mile a page out of history, each town and city a part of the making of America.

Join the author as he travels through Indiana on “Antique Alley,” stopping at towns and cities amid the rich farmlands and rolling hills, before previewing the route of the Old National Road in the other states through which it passes. 120 pages

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