National Road through Ohio

Today I went on a letterbox excursion on The National Road or what is now called U.S. Route 40 and originally referred to as the “old pike". In the 19th century it linked the east coast and the western frontier. It started in Cumberland, Maryland in 1811, reached the Ohio River in Wheeling, W.V. in 1818, and eventually made it to Vandalia, Illinois in the 1830's. The National Road opened the Ohio River Valley and the Midwest for settlement and commerce, and that it did. Thousands of people poured into the Ohio Valley to stake a claim. The two most common vehicles they used were the stagecoach (which could average 60-70 miles per day) and the Conestoga wagon (which with a team of oxen could travel about 15 miles per day). Along this National road mile markers were set to let travelers know how much farther they had to go to get to where they were going. (Also, when the little ones yelled, " Are we there yet?" They could yell back, "What did the marker say?". Many of these mile markers can still be found in Ohio, and some have been reset and preserved by the Ohio Historical Society.

Why Stamp and Ink You ask

I started Letterboxing a couple of years ago, because I like puzzles, the outdoors, art and history. Now, you are saying to yourself, "what the heck is a letterbox?" Well, I can tell you. A Letterbox is made up of a rubber stamp and logbook. The stamp and log are placed in a small (waterproof) container and hid from the public eye in some place that is accessible to other letterboxers. Then clues are posted via internet, and with lots of luck and patience the letterbox is found by other letterboxers. After finding a letterbox, I use my INK to get an image from their stamp and I stamp an image of my signature STAMP (which is an image that I use to identify myself) in their logbook. Therefore, I do not travel without my Stamp and Ink.

Letterbox clues can be found in many places on the internet, but the largest websites are LBNA.com and AtlasQuest.com.