And why the National Road bridge and the river near it were so important to the direction early Americans moved

In 1820, when John Mccormick built the first cabin in Indianapolis on Fall Creek, when Fall Creek entered the White River at three different locations (before it was rerouted in 1875), it was this that would become the nexus of a whole new city and state capital. In the next year, Isaac Wilson, a Revolutionary War veteran built Wilson’s Flour Mill.

Upon Wilson’s death, the flour mill would relocate and become known, in 1828, as the three-story Indianapolis Steam Mill, the first incorporated business in the city. The Steam Mill used the power of Fall Creek where it entered the White River to cut wood. By the time the National Road had crossed over the White River in 1834, numerous other mills had cropped up in the area to make everything from flour, cornmeal and stock feed

In fact, it was Indianapolis that helped feed the West as I show you below. The area in which it did this is now constrained by 250-acre White River State Park. WRSP has beautifully transformed a riverfront that by the 1980s, had become filled with dying and decaying businesses. It has turned it into a World-class work of art.

All those many years ago, when it crossed the White River, it was the National Road Wood Covered Bridge that opened up the frontier of the West where there were no roads. While there were other bridges along the National Road that preceded and followed the White River crossing, none of them engendered a riverfront that would help build the West. As half a million fortune seekers used the covered bridge to get to California and Oregon, soon even more mills (there were four flour mills) and factories were built near it.

They used the White River to power the water wheels at their production facilities. And then the mills used the bridge to send the flour (for making bread), and cornmeal they had ground to the people of St. Louis, Kansas, California and Oregon, the new West.

By 1862 Kingan Pork formed near the bridge, along the White River. Nor was it long before they became the world’s largest pork producer with operations on both sides of the waterway. Their business took off because pork, a staple of the American diet in the 1800s, did not require refrigeration. It could be preserved with salt. Because this was so, they could also ship their meat over the National Road bridge to all the brand new markets in the West.

At the same time, Van Camp, located a block from Kingan and the river was busy shipping millions of cans of pork and beans to the hungry Americans of the West. With the help of the National Road Bridge and then Union Station (the world’s first train station to serve as a hub, to put all the different train lines under one roof), they would go on to become the world’s largest canned foods producer.

In addition to sending food to the West, Indianapolis also helped put an end to slavery. This was so because from 1854 to 1859, thousands of people used the National Road bridge to get to Kansas to establish residency there. Their purpose in doing so was to affect the vote on slavery. In 1861 when Kansas entered the Union as a free state, many of its citizens came from above the Mason-Dixon line.

The Greenup replica
Although the National Road Bridge was sadly dismantled in 1902, we can do what the people in Greenup, Illinois (population, 1,365), 119 miles from Indianapolis , did about their bridge which had also disappeared. Even though it was almost half as long as the Indianapolis bridge, it crossed over the Embarrass River also on the National Road,

In their case, local citizens and Greenup city officials did not want the unusable bridge replacement that was there removed. Due to their work to designate this section of the old road as a National Scenic Byway, the National Road Association began efforts to revive the Greenup Historic Business District. Working together, these groups were able to get a grant from the Illinois Department of Transportation to build an exact replica

While only 200 feet long (the National Road Bridge was 350 feet), it was built according to the original plans which were found in the University of Illinois library. It looks very, very similar to the pictures we have been able to find of the Indianapolis bridge because it was built the same year as a part of the National Road. As such, we can likely use these building directives.

The replica was completed April 25, 2001. Final Contract Cost $2,823,429.45

We need to get in dialogue with the National Road Association. Maybe they’re still active in preservation? Maybe Jim Grey, who administers the Facebook group called The National Road,, would know if we can look to them for help?

Far more than restoring a scenic byway we genuinely need to replace one of the most important constructions in the history of America.

This is very propitious indeed. Please please help me spread the word!