Springfield was the northern terminus of the mail route early in 1823, and the next year Sangamon county, in which the village lay, was almost entirely without ferries, bridges, or roads.(409) In 1830 mail was carried between Vincennes and St. Louis thrice a week; between Maysville and St. Louis, and between Belleville and St. Charles twice a week. No point in Illinois, not on one of these routes, received mail oftener than once a week. There was at this time a mail route from Peoria to Galena.(410) The legislatures of Indiana and Illinois petitioned Congress for an appropriation to improve the mail route from Louisville, Kentucky, to St. Louis, Missouri. The length of that part of the route which lay between Vincennes and St. Louis was one hundred and sixty miles, but a more direct route, recently surveyed by authority of the legislature of Illinois, reduced the distance to one hundred and forty-five miles. The distance between Vincennes and St. Louis was made up of about one-fourth of timber land and three-fourths of prairies, from five to twenty miles across. "The settlements are therefore scattered, and far between, and confined to the vicinity of the timbered land. More than nineteen-twentieths of the land, over which the road passes, is the property of the Federal Government. To make the necessary causeways and bridges, and to keep the road in a proper state of repair, is beyond the capacity of the people who reside upon it." Another writer says of the route: "It must, for many years, be the channel of communication, through which the Government shall transmit, and receive, all its intelligence relative to the mines in the region of Galena, and Prairie Du Chien, the Military Posts of the Upper Mississippi, Missouri, and their tributary streams, and the whole northwestern Indian frontier."(411)
Galena remained much isolated. A man who had horses and cattle, purchased in southern Illinois and driven to Galena, by way of Springfield and Peoria, in 1823, says that there was no settlement between Peoria and Fever River. A year before, a traveler who went from St. Louis to Galena, on horseback, arrived in time to assist in completing the second cabin in the place.(412) Two travelers who walked from Upper Alton to Galena, in January and February, 1826, had to camp out several nights, because no residence was in reach. Much of the way no trail existed.(413) About 1827 it was common for men to go with teams of four yoke of oxen, and strong canvas-covered wagons from southern Illinois to the lead regions. In those regions they spent the summer in hauling from the mines to the furnaces or from the furnaces to the place of shipment, usually Galena, and taking back to the mines a load of supplies. In the fall the teamsters returned to their homes, sometimes, in the early days, taking a load of lead to St. Louis. These men lived in their wagons, and cooked their own food. The oxen lived by browsing at night.(414)