Goshen Road started as a natural, or pioneer, trace: a route that was used by Native Americans and migrating animals.
"The builders of Goshen Road looked east, striving toward a place where they could obtain their necessity - salt," wrote historian Barbara Burr Hubbs.
Hubbs explains further: John Reynolds, later Governor of Illinois, adds, "In the fall of 1808 a wagon road was laid off from Goshen settlement to the Ohio River salt works which in olden times was called The Goshen Road.
"[2] The southern stretch of the road was permanently laid out in an interesting way to find a direct route without surveying.
Because this survey was aimed at establishing the Township and Section boundaries, the surveyors were not paid for mapping roads.
Because these surveys marked only the Section boundaries, we often have an accurate location of the road only at one-mile (1.6 km) intervals.
It then followed that divide in a northwesterly direction, avoiding a crossing of the swamps around the Big Muddy River.
The road then crossed the Kaskaskia Bottoms, which could not be avoided, on a fairly direct line toward the Goshen Settlement, in the Glen Carbon area.
The road from Old Shawneetown to the salt works at Equality is shown, skirting the Shawnee Hills to the south of modern Illinois Route 13.
From the south, the original survey of Illinois first shows the Goshen Road cutting across the southwestern corner of McLeansboro Township, following the divide between two minor watersheds of the Saline River.
Goshen Road ran northwesterly across Knight's Prairie Township in western Hamilton County.
The road ran past the modern Ten Mile Creek State Fish and Wildlife Area, appropriately named the "Goshen Trail Unit".
One of the earliest settlers in Hamilton County was William Hardisty, who recorded a land claim in Knight's Prairie, adjacent to the road, in 1819.
The original Goshen Road turned north toward modern Opdyke, following the Big Muddy/Wabash Divide.
Deep wagon ruts are visible where the road climbed the bluff to the west of Casey Creek.