Goshen Road

Goshen Road was an early road that ran from Old Shawneetown, Illinois, on the Ohio River, northwest to the Goshen Settlement, near Glen Carbon, Illinois, near the Mississippi River. In the early 19th century, this was the main east/west road in Illinois.

Goshen Road started as a natural, or pioneer, trace: a route that was used by Native Americans and migrating animals. The road was not a definite, marked out path. It was, rather, a collection of vague, parallel paths that crossed, shifting with the season and over the years.

Eventually the demand for salt solidified the road's importance. "The builders of Goshen Road looked east, striving toward a place where they could obtain their necessity - salt," wrote historian Barbara Burr Hubbs. Salt was one of the dearest commodities that early settlers had and one of the most difficult to obtain. Settlers at Goshen at one time bought it eagerly for $9 a barrel. Hubbs explains further:

John Reynolds, later Governor of Illinois, adds, "In the fall of 1808 a wagon road was laid off from Goshen settlement to the Ohio River salt works which in olden times was called The Goshen Road." The southern stretch of the road was permanently laid out in an interesting way to find a direct route without surveying. They led a mare a day's journey away from her foal - then turned her loose. Rough blazes were cut on trees as the mare took the instinctive straightest course back to her foal.

Beginning around 1800, the Illinois Territory was surveyed pursuant to the Land Ordinance of 1785. Because this survey was aimed at establishing the Township and Section boundaries, the surveyors were not paid for mapping roads. However, many did show the locations of roads. Because the Goshen Road was often the only noteworthy feature at the time of the original survey, the road was noted in many of these surveys. Because these surveys marked only the Section boundaries, we often have an accurate location of the road only at one-mile (1.6 km) intervals.

Goshen Road generally followed the Saline River watershed in a northwesterly direction until it met the Big Muddy River/Saline River divide, which was also the Mississippi River/Ohio River divide. It then followed that divide in a northwesterly direction, avoiding a crossing of the swamps around the Big Muddy River. The road finally crossed the Big Muddy watershed in northern Jefferson County. The road then crossed the Kaskaskia Bottoms, which could not be avoided, on a fairly direct line toward the Goshen Settlement, in the Glen Carbon area.

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Wikipedia