America's First Interstate

Roger Pickenpaugh's new study of the National Road gathers into one highly readable volume a terrific wealth of information and detail about this first national intern improvement project. In our rush to appreciate canals and railroads, historians easily ignore the prosaic business of carving out roads through wild country, quite literally over hills and dales, through swamps and rocky passes. Working with pick and shovel and horse-drawn scrapers, breaking stone by hand to dress the roadways, these early civil engineers truly paved the way for the settler conquest of America's antebellum frontier. Deeply researched in archival sources, this volume fills a serious gap in our literature about early American highways. -- John L. Larson, author of Laid Waste! The Culture of Exploitation in Early America This will now be the go-to text for anyone wishing to learn about the long history of the nation's first major highway. But it is more than that. Pickenpaugh's extensive primary research gives us fascinating anecdotes and brings fresh insight into Jeffersonian and Jacksonian politics and the familiar battles over federalism, as presidents, legislators, entrepreneurs, and workers debated and constructed a 620-mile road that people still travel today. -- Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, author of Manufacturing Advantage: War, the State, and the Origins of American Industry, 1776-1848