Somerset County

Garrett County, MD · est. 1947

The National Road was the nation's first federally funded highway, championed by Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin as a link binding the young country to its western territories. Construction began at Cumberland, Maryland, in 1811 and reached Wheeling on the Ohio by 1818, carrying settlers, freight, and mail deep into the interior. After 1835 the states ran it as a toll road for seventy years, and in the automobile age it was rebuilt as U.S. Route 40.

Napier Township, PA · est. 1992

Standing where the Forbes and Burd Roads met, Bonnet Tavern welcomed travelers on the rough frontier routes west from 1779 under Jean Bonnet and his heirs. In mid-1794 it became a flashpoint of the Whiskey Rebellion, as angry farmers gathered here and raised a liberty pole to defy the new federal excise tax on whiskey. That October, the troops President Washington summoned to put down the uprising camped at the tavern on their march westward.

South Union Township, PA · est. 1996

Authorized in 1806, the National Road was the nation's first federally funded highway, carrying settlers, freight, and mail west across the Appalachians toward the growing Midwest. For nearly half a century, until railroads eclipsed it in the 1850s, thousands crossed Chestnut Ridge here in southwestern Pennsylvania. The village of Hopwood, founded in 1791, thrived as a busy resting stop for travelers moving in both directions.

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.