120 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



Mr. Gookins told me of an orchard which was set eight 

 years ago, in the ordinary, careless way, that is not now 

 near so good bearing as his. 



In 1818, Terre Haute was laid out a few miles from the 

 "frontier post," Fort Harrison,^ All of northern Indiana, 

 Illinois, and Iowa and Wisconsan, was then a vast, un- 

 trodden wilderness. Look at it now. See what a change 

 in thirty years. A region larger, and far richer than 

 some European empires, full of civilized life; and al- 

 though not one tenth cultivated, talking about furnishing 

 the world with human food. 



Nothing is now so much wanted as facilities of trans- 

 portation. No eastern reader, not even around Buffalo, 

 can form an idea what wretched bad roads the dwellers 

 upon this rich soil have to travel over, such a time as 

 this fall, for instance, has been. It is worth more than 

 produce brings, to haul it fifty miles to market. And 

 every effort to make good roads out of the soil alone, has 

 proved an entire failure. The national road is an example 

 in point. For, after an expenditure of more than $30,000 

 a mile, the road is now what a decent Yankee grand jury 

 would indict as impassable.^ 



There is a new bridge over the Wabash, and a very 

 muddy road west, though not near so bad as the one I 

 came over from Indianapolis. The part of Illinois lying 



' Terre Haute was laid out in 1816. Markle, A. R., "The Terre 

 Haute Company," in Indiana Magazine of History, 12:158-60. 



" In 1806 demand for better communication with the West caused 

 Congress to pass an act providing for the construction of a toll- 

 free National Road from the headwaters of the Potomac to the 

 Ohio River. Later it was proposed to extend the road to St. Louis. 

 The first section, from Cumberland to Wheeling, was not completed 

 until 1818. Gradually the work was carried on to Indianapolis. 

 Because of the rapid development of railroads, appropriations 

 ceased in 1848 after an expenditure of nearly seven million dollars 

 of federal funds. The road was only partially finished west of 

 Indianapolis, and grading ceased near Vandalia, Illinois. See Esa- 

 rey. History of Indiana, 1:290-91, for a description of the road in 

 Indiana. The Plough, the Loom, and the Anvil stated in 1851 that 

 "The Conestoga wagon-horses of Pennsylvania travel on the Na- 

 tional Road from fourteen to sixteen miles a day." 



