Historic Highways of America

Volume 10: The Cumberland Road

A series of monographs on the History of America as portrayed in the evolution of its Highways of War, Commerce, and Social Expansion. Comprising the following volumes: Paths of the Mound-Building Indians and Great Game Animals. Indian Thoroughfares. Washington's Road: The First Chapter of the Old French War. Braddock's Road. The Old Glade (Forbes's) Road. Boone's Wilderness Road. Portage Paths: The Keys of the Continent. Military Roads of the Mississippi Basin. Waterways of Westward Expansion. The Cumberland Road. Pioneer Roads of America (two volumes). The Great American Canals (two volumes). The Future of Road-Making in America. When this West was in its teens and began suddenly outstripping itself, to the marvel of the world, one of the momentous factors in its progress was the building of a great national road, from the Potomac River to the Mississippi River, by the United States Government—a highway seven hundred miles in length, at a cost of seven millions of treasure. This ribbon of road, winding its way through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, toward the Mississippi, was one of the most important steps in that movement of national expansion which followed the conquest of the West.