Early farming settlements were located in fairly close proximity to rivers. Those farmers who located further from waterways had to make the long slow trek in their horse-drawn wagons across dirt roads to the rivers where their grain would be loaded onto barges and sent down river to market.

Click the images below to see how bagging corn, hauling it overland by wagon on poor roads, then finally moving it to market via the river, posed one problem after another for Central Illinois farmers.