Notes from my Knapsack 7-9-20
Jeff Gill
Get your kicks, here in Licking County
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It was a Native American trail, known by the earliest written records as Nemacolin's Path.
Across mountain passes from Maryland to the Forks of the Ohio, Christopher Gist followed it west, and introduced a young George Washington to this path through the woods, which took him on a mission to the French at Fort Duquesne in 1753, and in the 1754 campaign to call for its demise. A year later Gen. Edward Braddock widened the Nemacolin Path to allow his army of over 2,000 men, 200 wagons, and artillery to travel west, changing the name of it to the "Braddock Road."
Braddock's Defeat left the general's body buried in the roadway, and young Lt. Washington learning lessons about white crossed belts over red coats in the middle of deep forest, lessons he would apply at Trenton and Princeton and around Valley Forge twenty-some years later.
In 1802 Washington's recalcitrant officer and Jefferson's Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, proposed the use of the "Old Braddock Road" cut by Daniel Morgan and Daniel Boone and others back in 1755 as a path for developing a main route to the west. The National Road was created in 1806 by action of the U.S. Congress, and it began construction in 1811, one of the nation's very first public works projects.
While known in turn as the Cumberland Road, only later the National Road, its most common name was the National Pike, traveled by thousands of settlers heading west in Conestoga wagons. Stagecoaches, too, made their circuits across the National Pike and back, which in the Twentieth Century became U.S. Route 40.
Now the "National Road," US 40 is the original "Mother Road." Route 66 has exceeded it in fame, the post-war connection from Chicago to Los Angeles through the desert Southwest of 1926, and the Lincoln Highway, US 30, was envisioned in 1912 and spanned the continent from Times Square to San Francisco, but Licking County's US 40 has roots all the way back to well before the 1750s.
Bobby Troup might be remembered by those of my age and older on "Emergency!" in the 1970s, but it's a shame that in 1946 all he had in mind was "Get Your Kicks, On Route 66" -- because Route 40 deserves a song of its own. Wikipedia claims Bobby meant to write a song about 40, but his then-wife said "what about 'Get Your Kicks on Route 66'?" . . . and a song was born.
"If you ever plan to motor west, travel my way, take the highway that is best. Get your kicks on Route 66." It does sound better than "let's go party on good ol' Route 40."
Some have suggested that there's a correlation between the latitude of 40 degrees north and the numerical designation of US 40, but that appears to be a happy coincidence. Somewhere between Deeds Road and Blacks Road on Rt. 37 is where that invisible designation runs east to west across the globe in our neck of the woods.
However you number it, though, The National Road is the beginning of our country's romance with travel, and travel west, and the open road, frontiers both internal and continental. Get your kicks here in Licking County, and take a drive from the Muskingum border to the edge of Etna. It's quite a kick.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's enjoyed some stretches on Route 66 out west, as well. Tell him about the roads you enjoy traveling at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
