First Roads to the West

Before Europeans arrived, only Indian trails passed through the vast virgin forests here. About 1750, Nemacolin, a Delaware Indian, blazed a trail past this place for the Ohio Company. Four years later, Virginia militia under Lt. Col. George Washington cut a narrow road through the wilderness from present-day Cumberland, Maryland, to beyond Fort Necessity. In 1755, Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock's British army widened Washington's road and extended it to the Monongahela River. Braddock's Road was a remarkable engineering feat, with hundreds of men cutting a 12-foot-wide swath through the forest for Braddock's 2,400 soldiers, 13 cannons, about 100 wagons, and a herd of cattle. After the French and Indian War, this road became the main route west until the adjacent National Road reached the Ohio River in 1818.

Farmington, Pennsylvania · United States