Hagerstown & The National Road

Hagerstown and The National Road. . , The National Road was the first Federally-funded road project authorized by Congress. A gateway to the western frontier, it began in Cumberland and extended to Vandalia, Illinois. Heavily used from the time it opened, it was America's first "super highway". To capture commerce fostered by the road, the Maryland legislature knitted together a series of privately funded turnpikes to extend the road easterly, from Cumberland to Baltimore., The Hagerstown and Conococheague Turnpike opened in 1819. It extended from Hagerstown's Public Square to Wilson Bridge on the Conococheague Creek (six miles west of here). Washington Street (to your right) , was part of this turnpike., Since the National Road was the main route of travel from the west to Washington before the development of railroads, this site was passed by several early national leaders from the "western states" including Presidents Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor and William Henry Harrison, and the "Great Compromiser," Senator Henry Clay. (Clay's wife was a Hagerstown native). Many thousands of pioneers passed this point in their westward migration., [Aside:] , Hagerstown's "West End" , Although some sporadic development occurred along the National Road in this area before the Civil War, Hagerstown's "west end" developed when the Western Maryland Railway reached the city in 1872. A construction and maintenance facility was opened on Elizabeth Street in 1884 and in 1906 the railroad centralized its repair facilities here. The railway employed hundreds of workers in this community, resulting in a residential building boom from the 1890s to the 1910s. This area was very much a railroad community , but not quite a "company town" , for the Western Maryland Railway. , , [Caption:] , The First American MacAdam Road - 1823 by Carl Rakeman , Courtesy of the Federal Highway Administration. This painting depicts the construction of the National Road between Hagerstown and Boonsboro. "MacAdam" at that time consisted of a layering of varying sized stones to create a roadbed.