The National Road

Upon America’s 250th anniversary comes the story of a new republic forging unity through ambition and action, inspired by George Washington’s youthful dream to build the nation’s first highway west

The National Road is the first narrative history of the federal project—begun decades before the nation itself was born and ranging through the 1830s—that connected the United States across the Alleghenies and into the western frontier. Starting with a young Washington’s dream of uniting the Poto...