The Braddock Road was a historical roadway in what was then British America and is now the United States. It was constructed in 1755 by British troops who were part of an expedition to conquer the Ohio Country from the French at the beginning of the Seven Years' War.
Construction
In 1755, General Edward Braddock of the Coldstream Guards was sent to remove the French from Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh). Starting from Fort Cumberland Braddock's army cut a military trail through the wilderness roughly following Nemacolin's path.
Braddock met defeat east of Fort Duquesne and was fatally wounded. He was buried in the middle of the road he built and his soldiers marched over the grave, with the hope of concealing its location from the Indians. When a more successful British expedition took place against Fort Duquesne in 1758 it used a very different route along what became known as Forbes' Road.
The National Road and later, U.S. Route 40, roughly parallel Braddock's Road between Cumberland, Maryland, and Laurel Ridge near Uniontown.
Harvard professor John Kennedy Lacock (originally from Amity, near Washington, Pennsylvania) was able to identify the path of Braddock's march, and hired a photographer to document the road. Lacock's photographs survive in the form of postcards which he published around 1905.
See also
References
- Cassandra Vivian, The National Road in Pennsylvania, Arcadia Publishing, 2004, ISBN 0-7385-1166-8
- Will H. Lowdermilk, History of Cumberland, Clearfield Co., October 1997, Paperback, ISBN 0-8063-7983-9. Full Text Online
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