Editing National Road (section)

===Cumberland Road===
[[File:Cumberland-national-road-marker-riverside-park2012.jpg|thumb|upright|Marker at the start of the Cumberland National Road]]
Construction of the Cumberland Road (which later became part of the longer National Road) was authorized on March 29, 1806, by [[United States Congress|Congress]]. The new Cumberland Road would replace the wagon and foot paths of the Braddock Road for travel between the Potomac and Ohio Rivers, following roughly the same alignment until just east of [[Uniontown, Pennsylvania]]. From there, where the Braddock Road turned north towards Pittsburgh, the new National Road/Cumberland Road continued west to [[Wheeling, Virginia]] (now [[West Virginia]]), also on the Ohio River.

The contract for the construction of the first section was awarded to Henry McKinley on May 8, 1811,<ref>{{cite web |url = http://www.cumberlandroadproject.com/federal/cumberland-road-contracts1.php |title = Original Contract Information For the Construction of the Cumberland Road / National Road – 1811 to 1812 |publisher = The Cumberland Road Project |date = February 16, 2010 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20141013071115/http://www.cumberlandroadproject.com/federal/cumberland-road-contracts1.php |archive-date = October 13, 2014 |url-status = usurped |access-date = February 12, 2016 }}</ref> and construction began later that year, with the road reaching Wheeling on August 1, 1818. For more than 100 years, a simple granite stone was the only marker of the road's beginning in Cumberland, Maryland. In June 2012, a monument and plaza were built in that town's Riverside Park, next to the historic original starting point.

Beyond the National Road's eastern terminus at Cumberland and toward the [[Atlantic Ocean|Atlantic]] coast, a series of private [[Toll road|toll roads and turnpikes]] were constructed, connecting the National Road (also known as the [[Old National Pike (disambiguation)|Old National Pike]]) with Baltimore, then the third-largest city in the country, and a major maritime port on [[Chesapeake Bay]]. Completed in 1824, these feeder routes formed what is referred to as an eastern extension of the federal National Road.