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The contract for the construction of the first section was awarded to Henry McKinley on May 8, 1811,[6] 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.

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Construction of the "Cumberland Road" (which later became part of the longer "National Road") was authorized on March 29, 1806, by third President Thomas Jefferson.

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The Braddock Road had been opened by the Ohio Company in 1751 between Fort Cumberland, the limit of navigation on the upper Potomac River, and the French military station at Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Ohio River, (at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers), an important trading and military point where the city of Pittsburgh now stands.

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Construction of the "Cumberland Road" (which later became part of the longer "National Road") was authorized on March 29, 1806, by third President Thomas Jefferson. 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" would continue west to Wheeling, West Virginia (then part of Virginia), also on the Ohio River.

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Even in the American Civil War, the Virginia and Monitor were not the first ironclads.  To support Union naval operations on the rivers in the western theater, ironclad river gunboats (City Class gunboats) had been built, launched, and deployed by January 1862.  These gunboats played an important role in the battles for Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in February of 1862.

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The National Road and later US Route 40), (also known variously in older historical mentions as the Cumberland Road, the Cumberland Turnpike, the Cumberland-Brownsille Turnpike (or Road or Pike)