The National Road at Hopwood

You are passing through Hopwood, Pennsylvania, a village that once sat at the crossroads of the young republic's greatest infrastructure project. Congress authorized the National Road in eighteen oh six, the first federally funded highway, intended to stitch the original states to the Ohio Valley frontier. Hopwood became a major rest stop on the road's passage over Chestnut Ridge, one of the Allegheny ridges that made westward travel so arduous.

Taverns, inns, and stables lined the route here as thousands of settlers, teamsters, and merchants crossed heading toward Pittsburgh and beyond. When the railroads arrived, the traffic faded, leaving Hopwood as a quiet remnant of the era when this road was the pulse of American expansion.