Americans long traveled in search of opportunity, using changing forms of transportation to move and resettle, and George Washington envisioned a highway linking east and west. In 1806, Thomas Jefferson authorized a road from Cumberland, Maryland, to Ohio, creating the roadway later known as the United States Road. Built by the next generation as a thirty-foot-wide crushed stone thoroughfare, it crossed rivers, traversed mountains, and opened America’s western frontier to the Mississippi. Merchants, traders, and families from around the world followed this route to claim land, expand markets, and build new lives. Built in the early 1800s as America’s first federal project, the National Road stretched about 800 miles, and much of it is still marked by historic milestones.