U.S. Route 40 through and near Cambridge largely follows the route of the National Road (also called the Cumberland Road), the first major federally funded highway in the United States. Authorized by Congress in 1806 under President Thomas Jefferson, the National Road was built to connect the East Coast with the western territories. Construction reached the Guernsey County / Cambridge area around 1828, following and improving earlier paths such as Zane’s Trace. Cambridge, platted in 1806 and the county seat of Guernsey County, prospered as a stagecoach stop and commercial crossroads along the road; by the 1830s it was served by multiple daily stage lines. Surviving physical remnants in the Cambridge vicinity include the 1828 Peters Creek S-Bridge west of town, the 1828 Salt Fork S-Bridge farther east, and Peacock Road (a preserved 1918 brick-paved segment of the old alignment east of Cambridge, listed on the National Register of Historic Places). In the 1920s the National Road corridor was designated U.S. 40; later Interstate 70 largely bypassed the older route. The National Road / U.S. 40 through eastern Ohio is part of a designated National Scenic Byway.
Reported Hauntings and Folklore
The best-documented ghost legend associated with the National Road / U.S. 40 corridor in the Cambridge region is that of Lady Bend Hill (also called Ladybend Hill), located west of Morristown in Belmont County, roughly 20–25 miles east of Cambridge. According to local tradition, in 1833 a young woman from a wealthy Wheeling, West Virginia, family eloped by coach with a man of more modest means from the Fairview / Guernsey County area. On a stormy night, while traveling the treacherous bends of the hill, a lightning strike spooked the horse; the coach slid and the woman was thrown out, breaking her neck (some versions say she was dragged and mutilated, with her head separated from her body). The horse reportedly ran free for days. On stormy nights, travelers and later drivers on the old National Road (and sometimes nearby I-70) have reported seeing the apparition of a headless young woman riding a spirited horse up and down the hill, or riding alongside vehicles. The story appears in local tourism materials, National Road traveler guides, and regional folklore collections. Details vary across tellings, and no contemporary newspaper account of the 1833 death has been widely cited in modern sources; the legend functions as classic roadside folklore tied to a historically difficult stretch of the old road. Other scattered National Road–related ghost stories exist farther along the corridor (for example, a headless horseman tale near Norwich), but Lady Bend Hill is the most consistently referenced in the Cambridge area.
Relevant links
Roadside America: 1918 Brick Road (Peacock Road) near Cambridge
Visit Belmont County: Legend of Lady Bend Hill
Wikipedia: National Road (Cambridge, Ohio) / Peacock Road
Visit Guernsey County: National Road
Ohio National Road Association / Historic National Road resources