BGuthrie Photos: PA -- Historic National Road

PA -- Historic National Road:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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[1] NRD_031123_03.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[2] NRD_031123_08.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[3] NRD_031123_11.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[4] NRD_031123_18.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. NRD_031123_03.JPG: This is one of the newer markers. Typically, individuals paid for these as part of the nostalgic thing. The marker on this says: In Memory of Burdette Eleanor Coldren, by their sons Ira B Coldren Jr, Clarke L Coldren.
2. NRD_031123_08.JPG: The rusted markers are original cast iron markers from 1832. Many of them were damaged or stolen and were replaced by the newer unrusted markers.
3. NRD_031123_18.JPG: You can see the markers only have two sides and then the pyramid at the top. This is done to make them lighter but they're still very heavy.
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Description of Subject Matter: The National Road was the first federally-constructed highways. It connected Cumberland Maryland with Vandalia Illinois. In 1833, the federal government returned the road to the seven states through which it passed. The states erected tollgate houses at 15-mile intervals to shelter the keepers. The rates varied somewhat from state to state. They were in part based on how much damage the traffic would cause the road. For example, a score of sheep or hogs would be charged 6 cents while a score of cattle would be 12. Wagons with thin wheels (4 to 6 inches wide) were charged 3 cents but wider wheels (6 to 8 inches wide, which cause less damage to the road) were charged 2.
There's a good write-up about it at http://www.route40.net/history/national-road.shtml . The following description is from that site:

For almost 800 miles west from Baltimore, Maryland to Vandalia, Illinois, the National Road served as one of the most significant predecessor roads for Route 40.

The National Road (also known as the Cumberland Road, Cumberland Pike, National Pike and Western Pike) was created by an Act of Congress in 1806 and signed by President Thomas Jefferson. The act called for a road connecting the waters of the Atlantic with those of the Ohio River. Although the Act mentions a road from Baltimore, federal funding began in Cumberland in western Maryland. Turnpike roads in Maryland connected Cumberland an Baltimore. Depending on who you ask, the National Road began in either Baltimore or Cumberland. When the road reached Wheeling on the Ohio River, the road was extended into Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. There were plans to extend the road into Missouri, however funding ran out about the time railroads appeared.

The National Road runs from Baltimore, through western Maryland, across the southwest corner of Pennsylvania and West Virginia northern panhandle, and through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. In western Maryland and Pennsylvania, the road roughly follows Braddock' ...More...
Wikipedia Description: National Road
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The National Road or Cumberland Road was one of the first major improved highways in the United States, built by the Federal Government. Construction began in 1811 at Cumberland, Maryland, on the Potomac River, and the road reached Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) on the Ohio River in 1818. Plans were made to continue through St. Louis, Missouri, on the Mississippi River to Jefferson City, Missouri, but funding ran out and construction stopped at Vandalia, Illinois in 1839.

A chain of turnpikes connecting Baltimore, Maryland, to the National Road at Cumberland was completed in 1824, forming what is somewhat erroneously referred to as an eastern extension of the National Road. In 1835 the road east of Wheeling was turned over to the states for operation as a turnpike, and came to be known as the National Pike, a name also applied to the Baltimore extension.

The approximately 620-mile (1000 km) road provided a portage between the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and a gateway to the West for thousands of settlers. It was the first road in the U.S. to use the new macadam road surfacing. Today the alignment is followed by U.S. Highway 40 with only minor realignments. The full road, as well as its extensions east to Baltimore and west to St. Louis, was designated "The Historic National Road", an All-American Road, by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta in 2002.

History:

The Braddock Road had been opened by the Ohio Company in 1751 between Cumberland, Maryland, the limit of navigation on the Potomac River, and the forks of the Ohio River (a site that would later become Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). It received its name during the French and Indian War when it was used in the Braddock expedition, an attempt to assault the French Fort Duquesne by General Braddock and George Washington.

Construction of the Cumberland Road (National Road) was authorized on March 29, 1806 by President Thomas Jeffers ...More...
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (PA -- Historic National Road) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2001_PA_Natl_RoadPA: PA -- Historic National Road (9 photos from 2001)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Historic National Road] [Display ALL Historic National Road photos] [History 1800s (excl wars)] [Transportation (Road)]
2003 photos: Equipment this year: I decided my Epson digital camera wasn't quite enough for what I wanted. Since I already had Compact Flash chips for it, I had to find another camera which used CF chips. That brought me to buy the Fujifilm S602 Zoom in March 2003. A great digital camera, I used it exclusively for an entire year. Trips this year: Three-week trip this year out west, mostly in Utah. Number of photos taken this year: 68,000.
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