The National Road - Ohio

The National Road - Ohio - Cambridge

The historic Guernsey County Courthouse (Doug Kerr)

US 40 continues west into the City of Cambridge. Cambridge serves as the county seat of Gurnsey County and is well known for manufacturing glassware. Cambridge's origins date to the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. Col. Ebenezer Zane, while constructing the frontier road known as Zane's Trace towards Kentucky, established a ferry over Willis Creek. By 1806, the town was platted and named Cambridge. Just east of Downtown Cambridge, US 40 is joined with US 22 which enters town from the Northeast. Together, US 22 and US 40 serves as the Main Street through Downtown Cambridge.

Downtown Cambridge (Doug Kerr)

Cambridge is well known for glassware and the work of the former Cambridge Glass Company. The Cambridge Glass company would begin production at the start of the 20th century. The company would operate in Cambridge until 1954 and was sold soon after. Production at the plant would continue until 1958, when the new owners Morrison Industries ceased operations at the site. (1) The National Cambridge Collectors, Inc. hosts a museum within the city that is dedicated to the preservation of Cambridge Glass.

Downtown Cambridge (Doug Kerr)

During the Christmas holiday season, Cambridge hosts the Dickens Victorian Village. The shops of Cambridge's Main Street transform into an old English village from the author Charles Dickens' era. The historic Guernsey County Courthouse becomes the focal point of a spectacular nightly holiday light show. The Village runs annually from November 1st through New Years with numerous events and activities throughout the two month celebration.

Cambridge is the birthplace of American hero, John Glenn. Glenn, who was the first American astronaut to orbit the earth and would later serve as a United States Senator, would also go on to attend at nearby Muskingum College in nearby New Concord.

Downtown Cambridge (Doug Kerr)

Site Navigation:

Sources & Links:

(1) Nye, Mark. "A Brief History of the Cambridge Glass Company." National Cambridge Collectors, Inc.
Doug Kerr

Comments

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population. The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

Gribblenation

Search This Blog