Goshen Road
CITY:
Mount Vernon
COUNTY:
Jefferson
DEDICATED BY:
Jefferson County Historical Society and the Illinois State Historical Society
DEDICATION DATE:
January 1, 1973 at 6:00:00 AM
The marker is located in the parking lot of the Jefferson County Historical Society’s Pioneer Park, which is in the extreme northwest part of Mt. Vernon. It is across from St. Mary’s Cemetery, on North 27th Street, one half mile north of Richview Road.
The Goshen Road was one of the main arteries of travel in the early 1800’s, when Illinois was frontier country. The road ran in a northwesterly direction from Shawneetown to Edwardsville — a distance of more than 150 miles. Shawneetown and Edwardsville were two of the leading commercial towns in Illinois. In the vast area between these towns most of the early settlements were along the Goshen Road, which was three miles east of this point in Jefferson County. In 1821, after the county was organized, an alternate road was surveyed in order to pass through Mt. Vernon, the county seat.