Americans long traveled in search of new opportunities, using changing forms of transportation as they continually shifted their plans and homes. George Washington envisioned a highway linking east and west, and in 1806 Thomas Jefferson turned that idea 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 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 build new lives. Built in the early 1800s, this paved highway west was America’s first federal project, and much of its approximately 800-mile length remains marked by historic milestones.