The National Road was the first major improved highway in the United States built by the federal government. Built between 1811 and 1837, the 620-mile (1,000 km) road connected the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and was a main transport path to the West for thousands of settlers. When improved in the 1830s, it became the second U.S. road surfaced with the macadam process pioneered by Scotsman John Loudon McAdam.
Brownsville is a borough in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States, first settled in 1785 as the site of a trading post a few years after the defeat of the Iroquois enabled a resumption of westward migration after the Revolutionary War. The trading post soon became a tavern and inn and was receiving emigrants heading west, as it was located above the cut bank overlooking the first ford that could be reached to those descending from the Allegheny Mountains. Brownsville is located 40 miles (64 km) south of Pittsburgh along the east bank of the Monongahela River.
The Ohio Company, formally known as the Ohio Company of Virginia, was a land speculation company organized for the settlement by Virginians of the Ohio Country and to trade with the Native Americans. The company had a land grant from Britain and a treaty with Indians, but France also claimed the area, and the conflict helped provoke the outbreak of the French and Indian War.
Redstone Old Fort — or Redstone Fort or Fort Burd — on the Nemacolin Trail, was the name of the French and Indian War-era wooden fort built in 1759 by Pennsylvania militia colonel James Burd to guard the ancient Indian trail's river ford on a mound overlooking the eastern shore of the Monongahela River in what is now Fayette County, Pennsylvania, near, or on the banks of Dunlap's Creek at the confluence. The site is unlikely to be the same as an earlier fort the French document as Hangard dated to 1754 and which was confusedly, likely located on the nearby stream called Redstone Creek. Red sandstones predominate the deposited rock column of the entire region.
Fort Necessity National Battlefield is a National Battlefield in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States, which preserves the site of the Battle of Fort Necessity. The battle, which took place on July 3, 1754, was an early battle of the French and Indian War, and resulted in the surrender of British colonial forces under Colonel George Washington, to the French and Indians, under Louis Coulon de Villiers.
William Trent was an American fur trader and merchant based in the colonial-era Province of Pennsylvania. He was commissioned as a captain of the Virginia Regiment in the early stages of the French and Indian War, when he served on the western frontier with the young Lt. Colonel George Washington. Trent led an advance group who built forts and improved roads for troop access and defense of the western territory. He was later promoted to the rank of major.
James Burd was a colonial American soldier in the French and Indian War, during which he played an important role in fortifying the Pennsylvania frontier.
Nemacolin's Trail, or less often Nemacolin's Path, was an ancient Native American trail that crossed the great barrier of the Allegheny Mountains via the Cumberland Narrows Mountain pass, connecting the watersheds of the Potomac River and the Monongahela River in the present-day United States of America. Nemacolin's Trail connected what are now Cumberland, Maryland and Brownsville, Pennsylvania.
Jacob Yoder was a pioneer of Swiss descent. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania and died in Spencer County, Kentucky.
Colonel Thomas Cresap (c.1702—c.1790) was an English-born settler and trader in the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Cresap served Lord Baltimore as an agent in the Maryland–Pennsylvania boundary dispute that became known as Cresap's War. Later, together with the Native American chief Nemacolin, Cresap improved a Native American path to the Ohio Valley, and ultimately settled and became a large landowner near Cumberland, Maryland, where he was involved in further disputes near Brownsville, Pennsylvania, including in the French and Indian War and Lord Dunmore's War.
U.S. Route 40 enters Pennsylvania at West Alexander. It closely parallels Interstate 70 (I-70) from West Virginia until it reaches Washington, where it follows Jefferson Avenue and Maiden Street. In Washington, US 40 passes to the south of Washington & Jefferson College. Following Maiden Street out of town, the road turns southeast toward the town of California. A short limited access highway in California and West Brownsville provides an approach to the Lane Bane Bridge across the Monongahela River. From here, the road continues southeast to Uniontown.
Brownsville Road is a road between Pittsburgh, at Eighteenth Street and South Avenue in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania eastwards through Mount Oliver and generally highlands situated along or near the hilltops often overlooking the Monongahela River. It has had several names over its history, and was also known at the Red Stone Road and the period it was a Plank Road managed as a toll road, the Brownsville Plank Road, or the Brownsville Turnpike, or locally, as the area grew into a city, Southern Avenue.
Thomas Gaddis (1742–1834) was a militia officer in the American Revolutionary War. He was born December 28, 1742, in Winchester, Frederick County, Virginia and married Hannah Rice in 1764; the same year he built Fort Gaddis, a refuge from the Indians, located on the Catawba Trail. In fact, Pennsylvania and Virginia had conflicting claims in the area Gaddis settled. Though he maintained his loyalty to Virginia, Gaddis also protected his investment by recording his patent with Pennsylvania authorities. By 1773, both states created new geo-political boundaries in recognition of increased white settlement. Pennsylvania formed Westmoreland County out of the larger Bedford County, and Virginia established the District of West Augusta. In 1776, West Augusta was further divided into three counties: Ohio, Yohogania, and Monongalia, where Gaddis and his family resided.
The Malden Inn is an historic, American building that is located in the unincorporated bedroom community of Malden, Pennsylvania at the junction of South Malden Road and Old U.S. Route 40 (US40).
Redstone Creek is a historically important widemouthed canoe and river boat-navigable brook-sized tributary stream of the Monongahela River in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. The creek is 28.4 miles (45.7 km) long, running from headwaters on Chestnut Ridge north through the city of Uniontown and reaching the Monongahela at Brownsville. Located in a 1/4-mile-wide valley with low streambanks, the site was ideal for ship building in a region geologically most often characterized by steep-plunging relatively inaccessible banks — wide enough to launch and float several large boats, and indeed steamboats after 1811, and slow-moving enough to provide good docks and parking places while craft were outfitting.
Thomas Brown, was an American colonial era husbandman, businessman, and land speculator. Along with his brother Basil, he acquired the bulk of the (Brownsville) lands towards the end of the American Revolution from Thomas Cresap(Cresap's War, Lord Dunmore's War), early enough to sell plots to Jacob Bowman in 1780 and Jacob Yoder who respectively made business firsts in 1780 and 1782; Jacob Bowman founded a trading post and tavern. Yoder got in a crop big enough to ship to New Orleans and invented the flat boat on Redstone Creek, inaugurating the water craft construction businesses which made the town an industrial powerhouse for the next seventy years.
Nemacolin was a hereditary chief of the Delaware Nation who helped Thomas Cresap widen a Native American path across the Allegheny Mountains to the Ohio River Valley.
The unincorporated hamlet of Malden is a bedroom community that is located on the historic 'Old National Pike' in borough of Centerville Washington County, Pennsylvania. Originally an early wagon stop in rural Pennsylvania, it became a small transportation hub during the surge of westward migration to the Northwest Territory after 1790.
Elisha Hunt (1779–1873) was the principal entrepreneur behind the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company that built and operated the historic steamboat Enterprise.
Caleb Hunt was a founder of the Monongahela and Ohio Steam Boat Company that built and operated the historic steamboat Enterprise.
