Highway to the Future

Today vehicular traffic whips effortlessly in both directions across the Appalachian Mountains, which separate the Eastern Seaboard from the American heartland. In early colonial times, however, that low-lying cordillera, though ancient and worn, nonetheless functioned as a near-impassable barrier. With plenty of land still available east of the mountains, only those traveling light and most determined to go west—Native Americans, trappers, traders—traversed the Appalachians.

However, in 1754, Austria’s rulers, the Habsburgs, decided to grab back Silesia, a province in what is now Poland, that Prussia had snatched. The resulting conflict ignited the Seven Years’ War, a European contest that spilled into the world at large. France sided with Austria. Britain sided with the Prussians. Each saw in that continental conflict a chance to evict the other from North America’s Ohio River Valley, which both Britain and France claimed.

France claimed Quebec and all the land drained by the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Britain declared that it owned North America between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The global confrontation’s American portion, the French and Indian War, brought the first road over the Appalachians into being. That artery grew and evolved to become U.S. Route 40, the National Road.

In 1755, intent on ejecting France from the Ohio Valley, the British crown assigned General Edward Braddock to attack Fort Duquesne, a French bastion at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers in what is now southwest Pennsylvania. To take Fort Duquesne, Braddock had to march nearly 2,500 troops from Alexandria, Virginia, across the Appalachians. To cross the mountains with wagons, horses, cannon, and supplies enough to sustain themselves and to prevail by siege, those troops needed to build their own road (see “Road to Nowhere,” p. 47).

Braddock was commanding British regulars who had been garrisoned in Ireland and were the first Redcoats in the American colonies in 70