Your Ancestors Traveled Along the Interstate Highway

The thought of your ancestors of 100 or 200 years ago traveling along a modern-day interstate highway may seem amusing as interstate highways didn't exist until the 1950s. Yet, it is quite possible that your ancestors traveled along the same routes as today's interstates, plus or minus a very few miles.

Westward migration in the United States usually took place in the path of least resistance: on riverboats where practical or on pathways along rivers when boat travel was not available. In cases where there was no river to follow, overland travel generally went along the path of least resistance, too: through valleys, through mountain passes, and perhaps straight across the flatlands and prairies.

When studying migration patterns throughout history in the United States, we can see hundreds of examples. In New England, the first inland areas to be settled were along the Merrimack River, the Connecticut River, the Penobscot River, and the others.

When researching the origins of those who settled the mountainous areas of northern Vermont and New Hampshire, we find that most of them were from Connecticut and western Massachusetts. They traveled up the Connecticut River, not overland across the north-south mountain ranges that receding glaciers carved many thousands of years earlier. Today, Interstate 91 follows roughly the same route.

In Massachusetts, the east-west migration generally followed the valleys through the central part of the state, often following the Boston Post Road (present-day U.S. Route 20). That path is more or less parallel to the present-day Massachusetts Turnpike, or Interstate 90.

As we travel down the eastern seaboard, the migration pattern was repeated: the Hudson River, the Susquehanna River, the Potomac River, the Savannah River, and many others became "highways" of travel for our ancestors. As we move further west, we find the "super highways" of years past: the Mississippi River, the Ohio, and the Missouri.

Of course, rivers didn't always exist in convenient places. Many times the early settlers blazed overland routes through valleys where travel would be easier for wagons drawn by horses or oxen. Two major examples would the Cumberland Gap in Tennessee and the Wilderness Road in Virginia. These routes did follow rivers, where possible, but they also went overland through valleys, following paths that could be used by horses and oxen pulling wagons. Of course, there were dozens of others highways.

If you follow the migration paths of your ancestors prior to 1850, you will see that they usually traveled along the same routes as did earlier travelers, routes that allowed for easier transport. These routes were generally on rivers, beside rivers, or through valleys.

For a few years in the first half of the 19th century, canals looked like they would become the primary method of transportation. Indeed, that did happen in a few areas, such as the Erie Canal. The traffic on the canals moved at two or three miles an hour as the barges and boats were typically powered by work animals that walked along adjacent footpaths. However, canals were doomed almost from the start as a new, mechanized beast soon appeared that could move more goods, move them faster, and do so at less construction expense.

By the mid 19th century, railroads started appearing in significant numbers. Railroad locomotives could perform the work of many horses or oxen, and the travel experience for passengers in railroad cars was much better than riding on a buckboard or a Conestoga wagon. These "iron horses" were very powerful but had one major shortcoming: they weren't very good at climbing hills.

The railroads were always built along the flattest land possible, often on or beside the routes that had already been established for overland travel. The railroads thrived best along riverbanks, which rarely had hills, or through valleys, including the Cumberland Gap and the Wilderness Road. More than a few railroads were built on the footpaths beside canals, replacing the "beasts of burdens" that had powered the canal boats of the previous generation. Of course, these new-fangled railroads transported immigrants, freight, and livestock alike.

Let's fast forward another century. In the 1950s, the federal government began its interstate highways project. The primary justification was to build a transportation system the Defense Department could use to move convoys in time of war. However, commercial and personal uses soon eclipsed defense purposes. Today we all travel along interstate highways without regard to the travel hardships of our ancestors.

The interstate highways often follow the same paths as the earlier railroads and the still earlier ox-carts and covered wagons. While modern construction techniques have allowed a few exceptions, such as building highways in the mountains, the majority of today's interstate highways are built along traditional trade routes and migration paths. In other words, today's highways often follow rivers, old canals, and deep valleys.

Are you mystified as to the origins of some family in your family tree? You know where they lived on a certain date but wonder where they came from? Get out a modern-day highway map, and find the town where those ancestors lived. Next, see where the major highways of that town go. Chances are that your ancestors traveled along one of those routes. They almost never traveled over a mountain range or through a swampy area.

There’s a good chance that your ancestors followed the same approximate route as today's super highways. Start by looking at the records of the state “up the highway” from their hometown. Sleuthing along today’s interstates may actually pay off.

Comments

[Randy]

Hope the states did a better job with the rest areas than they're doing now.

[Guy I. Colby IV]

Another excellent example would be the "Great Valley Road," which ran down the Shenandoah Velley from south central Pennsylvania to southwest Virginia (roughly the route of today's I-81). Countless thousands of German and Scot-Irish settlers (including many of my own ancestors) used this migration route during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

[Carol (Gunstone) Edvin]

Hi...What do you do when you know the exact date of their crossing but can find no record of it....My Grand-Father Joseph A. Gunstone from Sheffield, England...Arrived in New York 24 Mar 1892..Can find no record...Thank you Carol Gunstone

[Lindell]

I-5 down the West Coast generally follows the old 99E or 99W route, which of course followed Indian trails and pioneer trails. Oregon by the way has excellent "rest areas" so Randy needs to travel to Oregon and check those out.

[Lethene Parks]

Good overview of one tiny corner of the "tip of the iceberg" of this huge topic. For years I have been doing presentations on Migration and WEstward Expansion and other migration-related topics; it's a popular topic with people, but often an overwhelming one becasue of its complexity and enormity. It is important for a true understanding of your family's history.

[Dave Sarles]

Agreed except for references to the Interstates which cut through mountains and across filled-in low places. To find your ancestors' routes, look at the pre-interstate routes; state highways are the most likely. Dave

[Joan]

For Carol Edvin (above): I suggest you read the New York newspaper (microfilm)for his date of arrival. They used to list arriving passengers. It worked for me. Good luck.

[Larry Kelley]

In the diary of Thomas Benton Kelley he states that when he and his brother were traveling to Wheaton Ill to meet their father that they traveled on the Erie Canal. Along side of the canal was also the train tracts leading westerly. They talk of the great fun they had by jumping off the boat onto the train and riding it as far as it would take them keeping in sight of the canal. When the train veared away they would then jump off and ride the boat til the train tracts came swinging back to the canal and off they would go and jump on the train again. Today we might call it dangerous but in 1846 it was fun!

[Paula Snyder]

I wrote to Dick earlier this year about an amazing book that was to be published here in Nashville by Bill Puryear, Jack Masters & Doug Drake, called: Founding of the Cumberland Settlements, The First Atlas 1779 - 1804. It is now printed and available for purchase from http://www.cumberlandpioneers.com/index.html or Amazon.com. It relates directly to today's topic. As the authors state on their website: "This is not a traditional Atlas, it's much, much more with transcriptions and maps of all known North Carolina Grants, roads, traces, Indian and buffalo roads, Pioneer stations and forts, fords, licks, springs, mills, trading posts, racetracks, and early courthouses." Anyone who has early ancestors from North Carolina or Tennessee or who is interested in the routes these early pioneers took west will be interested in this book. It is both solid in its research and a work of art that I cannot praise too highly and, you will see, a labor of love on the part of the authors.

[Richard Brandstetter]

We retrace the footsteps of the 1789 Davis family migration from New Jersey to West Virginia. The entire body of the Shrewsbury Seventh Day Baptist Church in Monmouth County,New Jersey. involved over forty families in 1789 that was part of this Migration
WE began our trip in August of 1998, at Mile Marker 98 on the Garden State Parkway - the exact spot where the Shrewsbury Seventh Day Baptist Church once sat in Monmouth County
I will not go over that trip here just go to
http://www.wvhcgs.com/genealogysanswers.htm

[Jennie Vertrees]

It's small wonder that the Interstates followed the routes they have taken. After all, our ancestors in the westward movement often followed the old Indian Traces and the first National Highway was built from Baltimore to the middle of Illinois, starting before 1850. It was a toll road and took a number of years to build as it was all done by oxen, mules, horses and people. It wasn't paved with cement, but was made an all weather road by other means. Highway Interstate 70 follows closely that old road to the middle of Illinois and then it takes off for St. Louis. I've followed long parts of the Oregon Trail and the old trail to the Southwest and both routes follow a lot of the Indian Traces too. There are Interstates over a lot of the same roadbed. The roads have been straightened, but the National Road follows right on a lot of Indian Traces and Highway 70 followed it as well. I'm an old lady now, but I can vaguely remember when my home county in North Missouri had NO all weather roads and now we have a highway from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, which goes through the county and the East and West highway across the county is also built over an old Indian Trace. There's scarcely a dirt road left in the county, as they have been blacktopped and graveled.