Historic National Road - West Virginia

Historic National Road - West Virginia

Parks Directory of the United States / National Scenic Byways

Address: c/o National Road Alliance of West Virginia, Inc.
PO Box 6338
Wheeling, WV 26003
Phone: 800-828-3097;
Web: www.historicwvnationalroad.org Description: America's first interstate highway, the National Road was built to to link the people and cities along the Eastern seaboard to those on the frontiers west of the Allegheny Mountains. Authorized by Congress in 1806, construction of the road began in Cumberland, Maryland in 1811. The road reached Vandalia, then the Illinois state capitol, in 1839 and later was completed to the Illinois border at East St. Louis, opening a link to the water route of the Mississippi.The West Virginia section of the byway passes through Wheeling, where visitors can see West Virginia Independence Hall; Wheeling's "Old Town," a neighborhood of Victorian homes overlooking the Ohio River; Capitol Music Hall, established in 1933 and home to Jamboree USA and the Wheeling Symphony; the Kruger Street Toy and Train Museum, where the annual Marx Toy Convention is held; Wheeling Park and the Wheeling Heritage Trails; and the Wheeling Suspension Bridge, the first to cross the Ohio River; and the Elm Grove Stone Arch Bridge, the oldest extant bridge in the state.
Legth: 15.7 miles (West Virginia); 824 miles (entire route). Start/Endpoint: The east/west route runs from Baltimore, Maryland, to the Mississippi River at the Eads Bridge in East Saint Louis, Illinois. It crosses six states: Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The West Virginia section of the byway begins at the Pennsylvania-West Virginia state line on US 40 and continues into the city of Wheeling where it crosses the Wheeling Suspension Bridge. The byway continues onto Wheeling Island and ends across a bridge that leads to Bridgeport, Ohio. Designation/Year: All-American Road (2002).

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See other parks in West Virginia.