1860s: Construction of Roads and Bridges

  Beardstown

Beardstown is a major commercial center in the 1830s as steamboats arrive loaded with merchandise from New Orleans. The riverbank is often crowded with boxes, barrels, crates, and wagons. There is obviously a need to move these materials inland to the smaller towns. Initially, the goods are hauled in wagons drawn by six or eight spans of long horned oxen. A plank road is built from the sand ridge to the bluffs, and caravans of wagons stretch in an unbroken line from the riverbank to the bluffs (ESLARP 1999).