National Road
Redstone Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Our first national road; fathered by Albert Gallatin. Begun in 1811 at Cumberland, Md.; completed to Wheeling in 1818. Toll road under State control, 1835-1905. Rebuilt, it is present U. S. Route 40.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
The National Road was the country's first federally funded highway, championed by Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin as a way to bind the eastern seaboard to the growing western settlements. Construction began at Cumberland, Maryland, in 1811 and reached Wheeling on the Ohio River by 1818. Later handed to state control as a toll road from 1835 to 1905, its route was eventually rebuilt as U.S. Route 40.
Why it matters
As America's first national road, it set a precedent for federal investment in infrastructure and funneled a generation of settlers and commerce westward across the Appalachians.
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Related people
- · Albert Gallatin
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Steamboat Enterprise/Boatbuilding Center
Brownsville, PA · est. 1994
Along the Monongahela at Brownsville, the steamboat Enterprise was built in 1814 with an engine designed by Daniel French and, under Captain Henry M. Shreve, steamed to New Orleans and back—the first vessel to ascend both the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers under steam. The feat proved that western rivers could be navigated upstream, transforming inland commerce. For over a century, the boatyards of Bridgeport and Brownsville turned out flatboats, keelboats, and more than 700 steamboats that carried trade and settlers into the American interior.
Toll House
Menallen Township, PA · est. 1947
This toll house is one of six original gatehouses built along the Cumberland Road — the great National Road that was the first federally funded highway in the United States, pushing west across the Appalachians toward the Ohio country. The roadway was completed through this section of Fayette County in 1817–18, and when the federal government handed the road over to Pennsylvania in 1835, the state built these toll houses to collect the fees that would maintain it. Travelers, freight wagons, and Conestoga teams once paused here to pay their way west.
Uniontown
Uniontown, PA · est. 1946
Uniontown traces its founding to Henry Beeson, who raised a blockhouse here in 1774 on the very ground where the county jail would later stand. For decades it was a modest frontier settlement, but its fortunes turned when the National Road pushed through after 1811. As the great highway threaded the mountains, Uniontown became a busy waystation on the route west.
Uniontown
South Union Township, PA · est. 1946
Uniontown traces its founding to Henry Beeson, who raised a blockhouse here in 1774 on the very ground where the county jail would later stand. For decades it was a modest frontier settlement, but its fortunes turned when the National Road pushed through after 1811. As the great highway threaded the mountains, Uniontown became a busy waystation on the route west.