A New Look at America’s First Federal Highway and Its Founding Vision

The new volume explores how the National Road emerged as the nation’s first interstate highway after Congress authorized it in 1806 and work began at Cumberland, Maryland, in 1811. It portrays George Washington as a youthful surveyor who recognized the strategic importance of connecting the Potomac to the Ohio River, a vision later realized posthumously. Treasury chief Albert Gallatin is depicted as the fiscal architect who kept the project afloat, while Henry Clay expanded the initiative into a comprehensive American System of roads and canals.

The author underscores the Army Corps of Engineers as the unsung builders who managed the technical challenges of grading, drainage, and bridge construction. By linking distant markets and settlements, the road helped forge a cohesive national identity, a point the book illustrates through vivid scenes of stagecoaches, stone laying, and early mail routes. The reviewer, a former Capitol one outlet staffer, urges modern travelers on U.S. Route 40 to notice the historic markers that commemorate this foundational infrastructure.