Despite the fact that the Old Northwest (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois) was expanding, farmers in the region faced a major problem when it came to exporting their produce to markets on the east coast. Basically, lacking a water connection, they had to transport goods either overland, across the eastern mountain ranges, to either Philadelphia or New York (a path now partially feasible due to the opening of the National Road in 1817) or they had to ship their goods down the Ohio or Tennessee Rivers, to the Mississippi, through the port of New Orleans, to the east coast. Both of these routes were prohibitively expensive, and cut into farmers' profits, and thus the economic development of the region.
