The Old Military Road
From FranaWiki
The Old Military Road (also known as the Memphis Military Road) from Memphis to Little Rock opened in 1828.
The twenty-four foot wide road was paid for by a U.S. Congressional appropriation of $15,000 under the Road Survey Bill of 1824. The road supervisor on the Old Military Road was Lt. Frederick L. Griffith. The road contract required cutting down tens of thousands of trees, filling swamplands, and digging drainage ditches. The road project began on January 27, 1826. In October of that same year Lt. Charles Thomas took over road supervision duties. The road project was completed in August 1828.
References
- Ira Don Richards, Story of a Rivertown: Little Rock in the Nineteenth Century (1969), 18.