Americans have long been an adventurous people who used many forms of travel to change their plans and abodes, and centuries ago George Washington envisioned a highway joining east and west. In 1806, Thomas Jefferson turned that vision into reality by authorizing a road from Cumberland in Maryland to Ohio, despite risking his presidency. The next generation built that United States Road as a thirty-foot-wide crushed-stone thoroughfare that spanned rivers, crossed 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 build new lives.