Americans have long been an adventurous people, using changing forms of transportation to move from place to place and continually reshape their lives. George Washington envisioned a highway linking east and west, and in 1806 Thomas Jefferson authorized a road from Cumberland, Maryland, to Ohio despite the political risk to his presidency. The next generation built this United States Road as a thirty-foot-wide crushed-stone route that crossed rivers, traversed mountains, and opened America’s western frontier to the Mississippi. Merchants, travelers, traders, and families from around the world journeyed along it to claim land, expand markets, and build new lives, and much of the approximately 800-mile National Road still survives as the Historic National Road.

Photo: Devry Becker Jones

Photo: Devry Becker Jones

Grantsville, Maryland · USA