By Dr. Bruce Smith ——Bio and Archives--December 24, 2023
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It’s a personal song for Larry Cordle, who wrote it about a stretch of road in his home state of Kentucky just about 42 miles long. The great Ricky Skaggs styled it in classic bluegrass fashion as only he can. He made an anthem and an ode out of it for everyone who ever headed out onto any road and came back home sadder but wiser.
The title has universal appeal. Some harken to Interstate 40 that runs from Barstow, California along old Route 66 all the way to Wilmington, North Carolina. Lots of people call that stretch of road home. It’s really about the romance and lessons of the highway. The theme has its own genre in literature.
For me, Highway 40 can only be one road, the old National Road that originally started in Cumberland, Maryland and went to Vandalia, Illinois. Begun in the 1810s, it was the first real road west across the Appalachians. It was Jefferson’s idea. It became an original segment of the numbered federal highway system in 1926 and only the second paved highway in the country.
Like historian Frederick Jackson Turner believed, it’s important to know the history of our places of origin. Growing up, the National Road was part of our education,........