The Old Military Post Road

The Old Military Post Road that stretches from Minnesota to Louisiana was the first north-south highway to be built by the United States in the West. By the mid 1830s, it had become apparent that the frontier demanded mobile troops to separate the White settlements from the Indian tribes as well as to protect the tribes from each other. On July 2, 1836, President Andrew Jackson signed a bill providing for the defense of the Western frontier. By September, a proposal to build a 1,000-mile mili