Sendero de Edwards

Para 1492, los nativos americanos habían desarrollado una compleja red de caminos, senderos y caminos que se extendía por gran parte de Norteamérica. Si bien la mayoría de estos senderos se han perdido en la historia escrita, el que unía Cahokia con Peoria se mantuvo en uso activo a finales del siglo XVII y principios del XVIII, época de intensa actividad de los misioneros francófonos. Los católicos lograron convertir a algunos nativos de la Confederación de Illinois , y Cahokia y Peoria fueron sede de dos grandes asentamientos agrícolas semiurbanos pertenecientes a los clanes de este grupo. Los registros franceses mencionan el camino a partir de 1711. ^{[ 1 ]}

Con la firma del Tratado de París en 1783, Estados Unidos adquirió soberanía nominal sobre el territorio que se convertiría en el centro de Illinois. El joven país no pudo ejercer un control efectivo sobre la frontera hasta la Guerra de 1812 , cuando muchas tribus nativas americanas del Territorio de Illinois , con la esperanza de preservar su cultura y forma de vida, se aliaron con los comerciantes de pieles del Alto Canadá británico . Los pioneros del llamado American Bottom , agrupados alrededor de Cahokia, vieron esta alianza como una amenaza y decidieron actuar. Un líder local, el gobernador territorial Ninian Edwards , reclutó a 350 pioneros para formar una tropa de Rangers de Illinois. Avanzando hacia el norte desde el American Bottom por el Trace, los rangers penetraron en lo que entonces era territorio ocupado por el pueblo Kickapoo , obteniendo el control militar del río Sangamon y la región alrededor de Peoria. ^{[ 1 ]} Edwards se convirtió en un héroe para sus compañeros pioneros y, cuando Illinois alcanzó la categoría de estado en 1818, el líder de los rangers fue elegido rápidamente para el Senado de los Estados Unidos . En 1826, Edwards fue elegido gobernador de Illinois .

Following the War of 1812, Central Illinois was open to agricultural settlement and the Edwards Trace entered upon its busiest period of active use. The Trace and the prairie lands around it were carefully surveyed. In the 1820s and (to a somewhat lesser extent) in the 1830s, the trace was a primary pathway for Euro-Americans in and out of the Sangamon River Valley. Cartloads of furs, buffalo hides, and deerhides rolled southward, to be replaced by salt, gunpowder, lead ingots, iron tools, short and long guns, agricultural implements, textiles, and the other supplies required for frontier life. The freight traffic dug ruts in the Central Illinois prairie sod. As shallow-draft steamboats began to steam up and down the Illinois River, which runs parallel to the Trace, use of the Trace began to decline.^[1]

The Edwards Trace remained in active use into the 1840s. The Alton & Sangamon railroad was chartered in 1847 to improve transportation in and out of the belt served by the Trace, and as the new trackage was built, the old trail fell into inactivity. Parts of it appear to have continued in use as rural dirt roads for many years, but eventually the Trace almost completely disappeared.^[2]

In the 1900s, few wanted to remember the old trail. In the War of 1812, the event from which the Trace had gotten its English name, the northward thrust of Edwards's troop of Illinois rangers had been conducted with a brutality that was taken for granted by the successful frontiersmen at the time. Edwards and his men had conducted a search-and-destroy operation, destroying and burning every Native property they could find – including homes and villages led by Kickapoo who had tried to live in peace with the United States.^[3] Furthermore, almost all of the Trace had physically disappeared. Its sodded ruts had been paved over with asphalt, plowed up as loamy farmland, or buried under later engineering projects.

The original surveyors' records of the Trace survived and, supplemented by the published reminiscences of old settlers, enabled local historians to locate one remaining short section of Trace ruts in what is now Lake Park, parallel to the shore of Lake Springfield. A historical marker to celebrate the rediscovery was erected in 2002.^[1]

The Edwards Trace knit together what are now the communities of Cahokia, Edwardsville, Springfield, Elkhart, and Peoria, all within Southern and Central Illinois. Sections of Interstate 55 and Interstate 155 parallel the Trace's line today.