The National Road

Americans have long been an adventurous people, using feet, horses, wagons, stagecoaches, canals, railroads, bicycles, automobiles, trucks, and buses to keep changing their plans and homes. George Washington envisioned a highway linking east and west, and in 1806 Thomas Jefferson made that vision a reality by authorizing a road from Cumberland in Maryland to Ohio. Built by the next generation as the United States Road, this thirty-foot-wide crushed-stone thoroughfare crossed rivers, traversed mountains, and opened America’s western frontier to the Mississippi. Merchants, traders, and families from around the world traveled this route to claim land, expand markets, and begin new lives.

Maryland · United States