One of the National Road's more vocal supporters and certainly one of it most interesting characters was Rollin Allen. A poet and mail acrrier from Norwich, Ohio, Allen spent his life promoting the history of the National Road.
Allen's greatest claim to fame occurred during the building of the Route 40 bypasses in the 1930's. Norwich, being a very small village, could not handle the expanded highway and was scheduled to be bypassed. Throughout the rest of Ohio, the National Road milestones were moved to comparable locations along the expanded bypass highway. Allen objected to the moving of Norwich's milestone, telling the Department of Highways, 'Over my dead body.' And he meant it!
Allen proceeded to sit on the milestone non-stop for several days. Finally, the Department of Highways conceeded defeat. Allen had won his battle and the milestone stayed in place. The milestone remains in place to this day in front of an Ameritech switching office, one of the few National Road milestones remaining in its original location.
Allen also recognized one of the National Road's other less known claims - the site of the first highway fatality in Ohio. On a hill Just east of Norwich a fast moving stagecoach overturned, killing two of its passengers. In the 1930's, Allen's Boy Scout Troop (he was the Norwich Scoutmaster) erected a monument to the memory of those who died.
Allen also ran a small museum (Allen Pioneer Museum) in Norwich dedicated to regional history. Allen was also known as the Poet of the National Highway.
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