News & History

Cumberland Road one and one-half miles west of Brownsville, Pa. Library of Congress. (Public Domain)

With the purchase of the Louisiana Territory, America’s size nearly doubled overnight. Greater westward expansion was now possible and necessary. As famous expeditions were conducted to survey and explore the new lands, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin believed America should immediately begin constructing roads to move people west. His vision became the country’s first national highway. 

How a Treasurer Guided America Toward Its First National Highway 
Because the Louisiana Purchase doubled the country’s size, U.S. Treasurer Albert Gallatin suggested a method to quickly expand west. 

Bureau of Engraving and Printing portrait of Gallatin as secretary of the treasury. (Public Domain) 

By Dustin Bass 

“I feel not, however, any apprehension that France intends seriously to raise objections to the execution of the treaty,” Albert Gallatin wrote to President Thomas Jefferson on Aug. 31, 1803. “Unless intoxicated by the hope of laying England prostrate, or allured by some offer from Spain to give a better price for Louisiana than we have done, it is impossible that Bonaparte should not consider his bargain as so much obtained for nothing; for, however valuable to us, it must be evident to him that, pending the war, he could not occupy Louisiana, & that the war would place it very soon in other hands.” 

 Since March 1801, Gallatin had served as secretary of the treasury, a position he held for nearly 13 years—the longest tenure in the U.S. Department of Treasury's history. He was one of the most brilliant and successful treasurers as well. 

 The Swiss-born American congressman accepted the secretarial post because of his concern for “the Nation’s Debt.” When Gallatin became treasurer, the country had a debt of approximately $80 million. By the end of his tenure, he had cut the debt nearly in half. 

 The national debt, however, seemed to go the opposite direction when Napoleon Bonaparte offered the Louisiana Territory for sale. Gallatin saw the opportunity to purchase Louisiana—nearly doubling the country’s size for only $15 million—as an opportunity that could not be missed. It couldn’t be missed for two reasons: It would enable westward expansion, and it would therefore guarantee economic expansion. 

 Less than two months after Gallatin’s letter to Jefferson, which also laid out how the purchase would be financed, the Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase Treaty. 

 Supporting Expeditions 

Gallatin believed the Louisiana Territory would help lower the debt through the sale of land, as well as by increasing trade up the Mississippi River. Now that America owned the Port of New Orleans, it could also raise capital by charging customs duties on imports. One important step toward all of those possibilities was finding out precisely what America now owned, and that could only be achieved through exploration. It was an undertaking strongly supported by Jefferson and Gallatin. 

 Before the treaty’s ratification, the Corps of Discovery, led by Capt. Meriwether Lewis and 2nd Lt. William Clark, was being organized. Congress appropriated $2,500 for this expedition toward the Pacific Ocean. (It would ultimately cost approximately $40,000.) On May 14, 1804, the Corps of Discovery began its 28-month journey that would cover 8,000 miles. It became famously known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Gallatin had been such a strong supporter of the expedition that when the Expedition arrived at the Three Forks of the Missouri River, they named the east fork, Gallatin River. 

On Sept. 23, 1806, the Lewis and Clark Expedition returned to St. Louis. One of the greatest explorations in American history was complete. Shortly before the expedition was finished, another expedition began, led by Thomas Freeman and Peter Custis, called the Freeman-Custis Expedition, also known as the Red River Expedition. It was one of the first expeditions to explore the southwestern portion of the United States, with Congress appropriating $5,000 for the effort. 

The Need for a Highway 

These explorations were in lands far away and lands even further from being settled. It became imperative to expand the population to areas west of the long-established states along the east coast. The same year that the Louisiana Purchase Treaty was signed, Ohio became the nation’s 17th state. Gallatin believed it needed to be easier to reach the new state. He suggested building a federal highway (a suggestion he made possibly as early as 1802). 

 According to Rep. Andrew Stewart, of Pennsylvania, who was also a major advocate for a federal highway, "Mr. Gallatin was the very first man who ever suggested the plan for making the Cumberland Road." 

 It was during this week in history, on March 29, 1806, while the Lewis and Clark Expedition was nearing its completion and the Freeman-Custis Expedition was nearing its start, that Congress passed “an Act to regulate the laying out and making a road from Cumberland, in the state of Maryland, to the state of Ohio.” 

 The bill appropriated $30,000 for the road’s construction, which made it the nation’s first highway fully funded by the federal government. Construction for the “Cumberland Road,” though, wasn't immediate. It would be another five years before the first contract was signed to begin the road. In between that time, in 1808, Jefferson informed Congress that “Pennsylvania, Maryland & Virginia having, by their several acts, consented that the road from Cumberland to the State of Ohio … should pass through those states … I have approved of the route therein proposed for the said road, as far as Brownsville with a single deviation since located, which carries it through Union town.” 

Perhaps not so coincidentally, Uniontown was in Fayette County, the same county Gallatin had built his now famous home called Friendship Hill, located slightly southwest of Uniontown. 

Construction Begins 

Starting in Cumberland on near the Potomac River, the road would ultimately extend 620 miles west by the end of its construction. Additionally, the road would connect to an older road called the Old National Pike, which stretched from Baltimore, covering 118 miles. 

 In 1811, the first contract and the first 10 miles of what was called the Cumberland Pike was completed; it was most famously known as the National Road and was designed to be wide enough to allow wagons to pass each other safely on both sides. The road was formed to force water to drain off to the sides. 

 Its design was reminiscent of the famous Roman roads. 

 “It is covered with a very thick layer of nicely broken stones, or stone, rather, laid on with great exactness both as to depth and width, and then rolled down with an iron roller, which reduces all to one solid mass,” wrote British writer, William Cobbett, when he viewed its construction in 1817. “This is a road made forever.” 

 In 1818, the National Road completed the first stretch of the highway, reaching the Ohio River in Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia). By this time, the National Road had achieved another name: The Main Street of America. It continued to rise in popularity as more and more people traveled westward on stagecoaches and Conestoga wagons. The road, as Gallatin had envisioned, created economic opportunity. Inns and taverns began popping up along the newly constructed highway. 

Extending the National Road 

There was ongoing controversy within Congress about whether or not the Legislature had the Constitutional authority to pay for and establish roads. The question became even more controversial when the Panic of 1819 coincided with the need to repair the National Road east of Wheeling and with the proposal for an additional $140,000 to pay for existing contracts. Congress apparently answered the question by continuing construction. 

Construction of the road continued with the passage of the Act of May 15, 1820, which authorized Congress to appropriate funds to pay for the National Road’s extension. It was planned from Wheeling through the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois (the latter two had become states in 1816 and 1818, respectively) and reaching “the left bank of the Mississippi river … between St. Louis and the mouth of the Illinois river.” 

The following decade, the federal government agreed to cover ongoing repairs of the National Road, while states constructed toll houses. By the 1830s, the road reached its final destination: the short-lived capital of Illinois, Vandalia. 

Construction ended due to lack of federal funds, but the road had proven immensely useful. The 1840s witnessed the height of the road’s success in the 19th century. By the 1850s, however, traffic substantially decreased with the rise of the railroads. 

The Decline and Rise of the Road 

The transcontinental railroad was a more efficient mode of transportation, specifically for longer travel. The journey, wherever one wished to travel, was faster and more comfortable. 

“The national turnpike that led over the Alleghenies from the East to the West is a glory departed,” stated an 1879 article in Harper’s. 

 The National Road remained in operation, and a good thing it did, because its glory was soon to return. By the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th century, a new form of transportation was gaining in popularity: the automobile. 

 Perhaps Gallatin never envisioned an invention quite like the automobile, but his vision for what the road could provide for America proved prescient and capable of adapting to changing times and technologies. 

 Early in the 20th century, Congress passed several laws to create and maintain federal highways, such as the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 and the Federal Highway Act of 1921. The latter instituted a national highway system that enabled transcontinental travel. Roads, including the National Road, began to interconnect with the national highway system. 

According to the National Road Heritage Foundation, “Now, the new Historic National Road, U.S. Route 40, is the busiest it has been since its heyday of the 1840s.” By the 1920s, the road had become America’s primary method of travel and has remained so to this day.