Editing National Road (section)

===Transfer to states===
[[File:Alt US&nbsp;40 Cumberland Narrows.jpg|thumb|The [[Cumberland Narrows]] west of Cumberland, part of the realigned routing]]
Maintenance costs on the Cumberland Road were becoming more than Congress was willing to bear. In agreements with Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, the road was to be reconstructed and resurfaced. The section that ran over [[Haystack Mountain (Maryland)|Haystack Mountain]], just west of Cumberland, was abandoned and a new road was built through the [[Cumberland Narrows]].

On April 1, 1835, the section from Wheeling to Cumberland was transferred to Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia (now West Virginia). The last congressional [[Appropriation (law)|appropriation]] was made May 25, 1838, and in 1840, Congress voted against completing the unfinished portion of the road, with the deciding vote being cast by [[Henry Clay]]. By that time, railroads were beginning to compete for long-distance transportation. The [[Baltimore and Ohio Railroad]] was being built west from Baltimore to Cumberland, mostly along the Potomac River, which was a more direct route than the National Road across the [[Allegheny Plateau]] of West Virginia (then Virginia) to Wheeling. Construction of the National Road stopped in 1839. Portions of the road through Indiana and Illinois remained unpaved or otherwise rudimentary and were transferred to the states.

Federal construction of the road stopped at [[Vandalia, Illinois]], which at that time was the state's capital. Illinois officials decided not to continue construction without the federal funds because two state roads from Vandalia to the St. Louis area, today's US&nbsp;40 and [[Illinois Route 140]] (known then as the [[Alton, Illinois|Alton]] Road), already existed.<ref>{{Cite news |last = Selbert |first = Pamela |date = May 30, 2004 |title = A drive into the past on the Illinois National Road |language = en-US |work = Chicago Tribune |url = https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2004-05-30-0405300379-story.html |access-date = May 7, 2020 }}</ref>