Americans have long pursued movement and opportunity by many means of travel, and the National Road grew from George Washington’s vision of a highway linking east and west into a reality authorized by Thomas Jefferson in 1806 as a road from Cumberland, 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, and as America’s first federal project for a paved highway west, much of its approximately 800-mile length remains marked by historic milestones.

Photo: Mark Hilton

Photo: TeamOHE

Photo: Mark Hilton