The National Road

The National Road

The National Road

The automobile rediscovered long-distance roads forgotten since the rise of the railroads, and then reshaped them to suit their purpose.

The National Road completed over the Allegheny Mountains from Cumberland, Maryland, to the Ohio River at Wheeling in 1811, was rediscovered by the National Old Trails Association in 1911 when they proposed to improve it as part of a transcontinental auto trail. By the time this postcard published in 1936, the National Highway was part of transcontinental US 40 and federal funding was in place for the massive cuts and fills needed to straighten the road on the west slope Chestnut Ridge just east of Uniontown, Pennsylvania. A remnant bit of abandoned National Road S-curves across the line of traffic, the upper part already reseeded to grass.

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