The act of 1825, authorizing the extension of the great road into the state of Ohio, was greeted with intense enthusiasm by the people of the West. The fear that the road would not be continued beyond the Ohio River was generally entertained, and for good reasons. The debate of constitutionality, which had been going on for several years, increased the fear. And yet it would have been breaking faith with the West by the national Government to have failed to continue the road. The act appropriated one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for an extension of the road from Wheeling to Zanesville, Ohio, and work was immediately undertaken. The Ohio was by far the greatest body of water which the road crossed, and for many years the passage from Wheeling to the opposite side of the Ohio, Bridgeport, was made by ferry. Later a great bridge, the admiration of the countryside, was erected. The road entered Ohio in Belmont County, and eventually crossed the state in a due line west, not deviating its course even to touch cities of such importance as Newark or Dayton, although, in the case of the former at least, such a course would have been less expensive than the one pursued. Passing due west the road was built through Belmont, Guernsey, Muskingum, Licking, Franklin, Madison, Clark, Montgomery, and Preble Counties, a distance of over three hundred miles. A larger portion of the Cumberland Road which was actually completed lay in Ohio than in all other states through which it passed combined. The work on the road between Wheeling and Zanesville was begun in 1825-26. Ground was broken with great ceremony opposite the Court House at St. Clairsville, Belmont County, July 4, 1825. An address was made by Mr. William B. Hubbard. The cost of the road in eastern Ohio was much less than the cost in Pennsylvania, averaging only about three thousand four hundred dollars per mile. This included three-inch layers of broken stone, masonry bridges, and culverts. Large appropriations were made for the road in succeeding years and the work went on from Zanesville due west to Columbus. The course of the road between Zanesville and Columbus was perhaps the first instance where the road ignored, entirely, the general alignment of a previous road between the same two points. The old road between Zanesville and Columbus went by way of Newark and Granville, a roundabout course, but probably the most practicable, as anyone may attest who has traveled over the Cumberland Road in the western part of Muskingum County. A long and determined effort was made by citizens of Newark and Granville to have the new road follow the course of the old, but without effect. Ohio had not, like Pennsylvania, demanded that the road should pass through certain towns. The only direction named by law was that the road should go west on the straightest possible line through the capital of each state.