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On February 28, 1823, President James Monroe approved an act of Congress granting Ohio 120 feet of land on either side of a proposed road through ceded Indian land, connecting that state with the Michigan Territory.
The act also granted an additional two-mile-wide swath of land along the road to pay for construction, and sought to encourage state sales through restricting competition by directing that no federal lands be sold within three miles of the road for three months.
The act was an important development in the government’s constitutional authority to subsidize transportation infrastructure known as “internal improvements.”
– Hon. Ronald A. Sarasin, President, United States Capitol Historical Society