The National Road—Our Oldest Highway
Stretching from Baltimore, Maryland to Vandalia, Illinois, construction of the National Road began in 1811. It was planned as a route to connect the eastern settlements with the western frontier beyond the Appalachian Mountains in order to make trade and travel possible in the interior of our young country. Today, much of the 
original route is obscured by US Route 40 and even I-70, but if you're careful, you can find the pieces that are left and a lot more...
We've traveled bits and pieces of "the road" for years, but in September of 2004, we motored from Baltimore to West Virginia following as much of the original alignment as possible! Our fascination with the road began about 15 or 20 years ago. In fact the photo above is an early one because we're in the '77 Chevette! It's crossing the 1849 Suspension Bridge on the National Road, spanning the Ohio River in Wheeling, WV.
One day we discovered the National Road / Zane Grey Museum just outside of Zanesville, Ohio. It's a rare day that you find it open, so we stopped in and 
paid our admission. The history of the road and its unique features were something we'd never heard of before, so we decided to follow it as far as we could on the way home. Ever since then, we've been trying to cover it all, and more recently we've been stopping along the way to see what remains of its early history.
Of our many National Road trips, our favorite so far has been the trip we took in 2004 for our anniversary. We started from Baltimore and made it to West
Virginia and home again in two little days! Following a guide book we bought at the National Road Museum in Richmond, Indiana several years back, we read aloud and stopped all along the way to wonder and take pictures. If only the author had given us mile markers to follow!!! We had fun anyway trying to find the sites he was writing about and the original alignment of the road. The bridge at the right is the 1813 Casselman River Bridge near Grantsville, Maryland where we spent the night in an inn dating to 1824.
