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.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the first decades of the 1800s, the United States faced a stubborn geographic problem: the Appalachian Mountains stood like a wall between the settled Atlantic states and the fast-growing country beyond. Goods, mail, and settlers all moved slowly and expensively over rough tracks.
The answer, still radical for its time, was a road built with national purpose and national money — a durable route to knit the eastern seaboard to the western settlements. Construction of that road began in 1811 at Cumberland, Maryland, and reached the Ohio River at Wheeling by 1818.
This stretch through Fayette County was part of that pioneering highway. It carried the traffic of a country in motion at a moment when "the West" meant the far side of these very mountains.
People & events
The figure named here is Albert Gallatin, the long-serving Treasury Secretary who championed the idea of a federally supported national road. He saw clearly that binding the country together physically was also a way of binding it together politically and economically.
The road's later life is its own story. For decades in the nineteenth century it passed under state control as a toll road, from 1835 to 1905 — a working turnpike where travelers paid for passage and the route was maintained through the fees.
And the road never really died. Rebuilt for a new age of travel, its corridor became present-day U.S. Route 40. The wagons and stagecoaches gave way to automobiles, but the line across the land that Gallatin argued for still carries traffic today.
Its place in the American story
As the country's first national road, this route set a precedent that echoed far beyond Pennsylvania and Maryland. It marked one of the earliest instances of the federal government investing directly in the infrastructure of expansion.
Down its length rolled a generation of settlers, freight wagons, and mail heading toward the Ohio Valley and the lands beyond. The road did not just serve westward movement — it accelerated it, helping populate and connect a growing nation.
The debates it sparked — over who should build roads, and who should pay — shaped American thinking about public works for generations. In that sense the ribbon of pavement here is an ancestor of every federally funded highway that came after it.
If you visit
Today this history hides in plain sight along a modern highway, and that is part of the fun. When you drive U.S. Route 40 through this part of Pennsylvania, you are tracing the path of the original national road beneath your wheels.
Watch for the old road's fingerprints — historic mile markers, aging stone bridges, and taverns and inns that once served travelers pausing on the long haul west. The corridor is dense with these survivors if you slow down and look.
This makes for a rewarding themed road trip: follow the route, stop at the marker, and let the layered history of two centuries of travel unfold. You will be moving the same direction as the settlers did, on the same line across the mountains they helped open.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Albert Gallatin
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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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.