This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Atkinson, Fields Classification: Lookup Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/ok.2ADE/4241.3 Message Board Post: THE MISSOURI INTELLIGENCER. Franklin, Missouri. November 4, 1820.--........The establishment at The Council Bluffs have this year made great improvements in their barracks; have raised about 13,000 bushel of corn, 10,000 bushels of potatoes and turnips, and their gardens furnish them the comforts of the husbandsman...... Under the superintendence of Gen. Atkinson, a road has been completed from The Council Bluffs to Chariton, a distance of 257.75 miles, the course south 58.5 degrees with very little variation from a straight line. Lt. Gabriel Fields was chosen to mark this road last fall. He was again selected to complete it. On the 2nd of September, he left The Council Bluffs with 30 men and a wagon drawn by six horses and carrying from 4 to 5000 pounds, and in 47 days the whole company reached Chariton in good health. It is worthy of remark that all the streams, about 60 in number, were bridged except the Platte, the Nodaway, the Nishnabotana and the Grand River, and that the enterprise and industry of Lt. Fields in this short time has completed this road equal if not superior to any of the same length in the Union. Lt. Fields represents the country as rich and beautifully diversified with timber and prairie, well supplied with springs of running water, and in a few years more, will be beautified with farms and cottages of American citizens. And those plains which now give their wild luxuriance to the deer, elk, and the buffalo, will yield a still richer harvest to the industrious farmer. Lt. Fields takes with him about 70, making the whole number about 120 milch cows, and 700 stock hogs. These in a short time Gen. Atkinson will be able to subsist his command, and should a philosopher visit The Council Bluffs, he will find an army of husbandman, who, should they ever be brought to act against the slaves of a despot or a king, will prove that the arts of peace do not weaken the strong arm of the American soldier. N.B.: Perhaps it should be stressed that this report says all of the smaller streams on The Council Bluffs Road had been bridged. Ask yourself what small streams in Fremont county would have been bridged by Lt. Fields in 1820.......This first road to The Council Bluffs was often called "Field's Trace".--W.F.