Historic Highways of America

Beginning with the first highways of America, the first monograph of the series will consider the routes of the mound-building Indians and the trails of the large game animals, particularly the buffalo, as having set the course of landward travel in America on the watersheds of the interior of the continent. The second monograph will treat of the Indian thoroughfares of America; the third, fourth, and fifth, the three roads built westward during the old French War, Washington's Road (Nemacolin's Path), Braddock's Road, and the Old Glade (Forbes's) Road. The sixth monograph will be a study of Boone's Wilderness Road to Kentucky; the seventh and eighth, a study of the principal portage paths of the interior of the continent and of the military roads built in the Mississippi basin during the era of conquest;[Pg 12] Vol. IX. will take up the historic water-ways which most influenced westward conquest and immigration; the famed Cumberland Road, or Old National Road, "which more than any other material structure in the land served to harmonize and strengthen, if not to save, the Union," will be the subject of the tenth monograph. Two volumes will be given to the study of the pioneer roads of America, and two to the consideration of the history of the great American canals.