Historic National Road - West Virginia
Historic National Road - West Virginia is an All-American Road in West Virginia. Within West Virginia it covers roughly 19 miles. The map below shows its route. Use “Plan a drive” to open it in the Road Sorties route planner — already routing along Historic National Road - West Virginia with scenic roads turned on, ready to add your own stops.
West Virginia's roughly 16-mile share of the Historic National Road follows US 40 from the Pennsylvania line to the Ohio River at Wheeling. Congress authorized the National Road from Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheeling in 1806, and after mail service began on the unfinished road in 1818, the original 131-mile route was completed in 1821 at a cost of $1.7 million, making it the nation's first federally funded interstate highway. In West Virginia, the road follows the Wheeling Creek valley through Roney's Point, Triadelphia, and Elm Grove before reaching the Ohio River, where the 1849 Wheeling Suspension Bridge, once the longest in the world, still carries traffic across. In 2002, this stretch became West Virginia's first All-American Road, the top tier of the National Scenic Byways program. Two centuries after it opened the country to westward settlement, the road survives today as a slower alternative route paralleling Interstate 70.
- US 40
- Wheeling Suspension Bridge
- 16 miles
- 1821 completion
- All-American Road 2002
- Wheeling Creek valley
- $1.7 million construction cost
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What is an All-American Road?
All-American Roads are the top tier of America's National Scenic Byways. To earn the title a road has to be a destination in its own right — offering features so exceptional, across several intrinsic qualities (scenic, natural, historic, cultural, archaeological or recreational), that they can't be found anywhere else.