Historic Trails, Named Roads, etc

AND ROADS

See also the Scenic Roads section.

Alaska Highway

Appalachian National Scenic Trail - See the Appalachian National Scenic Trail page.

Bicentennial Highway / Utah State Road 95 - See the Bicentennial Highway page.

Bozeman Trail

Cabot Trail

The present-day Cabot Trail is a road, reported as being highly scenic and offering spectacular views, which runs along the northeastern coast of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The road passes through Cape Breton Highlands National Park.

California Trail

The historic California Trail was the route west for many pioneers in the nineteenth century. The trail followed the same route as the Oregon Trail as far as Fort Bridger in Wyoming, from where it branched off to the southwest.

El Camino Real

The historic El Camino Real (Spanish for "The Royal Road" - Real is pronounced ray-al) ran along the Rio Grande valley in New Mexico from El Paso north to Santa Fe and into eastern Colorado. I-25 follows much the same route today.

Chihuahua Trail

The historic Chihuahua Trail ran from Mexico City to Santa Fe in New Mexico. It passed through Albuquerque, New Mexico. It therefore would seem to follow much the same route as El Camino Real, and may just have been an alternative name.

Chisholm Trail

The historic Chisholm Trail ran north from San Antonio in Texas, via Austin and Fort Worth, then through Oklahoma (referred to as "Indian Territory" at the time when the trail was used) to Wichita and finally Abilene in Kansas (which is not to be confused with the town of the same name in Texas). The trail was a major cattle driving route, used by cattlemen driving their herds for shipment east by rail in the period following the American Civil War. The trail began to fall into disuse once the main shipment point moved west to Dodge City in the early 1870's, and was abandoned once all cattle shipments were made by rail from the 1880's.

Cumberland Road

See National Road.

Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail

The Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, administered by the United States National Park Service, runs for approximately 3,700 miles approximately along the route taken by the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

The trail starts near Wood River in Illinois and runs through parts of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington State. However, many sections of the expeditions' journey were conducted by boat on the Missouri and Columbia Rivers. Several sections of the route which are now covered by modern-day roads are marked with a special sign with a silhouette of Lewis and Clark, one of them with his arm outstretched pointing to the left. However, the route is not signposted as an integrated unit. There are a number of historic memorials, visitor centres, etc along the way. A considerable amount of detailed information is available on the relevant page of the US National Park Service web site.

Lincoln Highway

Mormon Trail

Natchez Trace

See the Natchez Trace Parkway page.

National Road

The historic National Road, also called the Cumberland Road, ran for nearly 800 miles from Cumberland in Maryland to Vandalia in Illinois. Part of US40 now runs along the same route. The building of the road was a significant factor in the development of the land west of the Appalachian Mountains.

Oregon Trail

Between 1842 and 1862 an estimated 300,000 emigrants travelled along the Oregon Trail. The journey took some five or six months, and timing of when to start out was critical in order to provide sufficient grazing and in order to avoid bad weather in the mountains.

Most emigrants used oxen to pull their covered wagons, not horses.

The United States Bureau of Land Management have established an excellent Oregon Trail Interpretive Centre near the town of Baker City, Oregon.

There is an excellent Museum of the Oregon Trail at Scotts Bluff National Monument in Nebraska.

The United States National Park Service administer the Oregon National Historic Trail. Although much of the route can be travelled on modern-day roads, and there are numerous historical markers and exhibits along the way, the route is not signposted as an integrated unit. A considerable amount of detailed information is available on the relevant page of the US National Park Service web site.

Route 66

Route 66, or US66 to give it its official designation, is immortalized in the well known song of the same name, which lists many of the places the road passed through:

Chicago, Illinois

St Louis, Missouri

Joplin, Missouri

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Amarillo, Texas

Gallup, New Mexico

Flagstaff, Arizona

Kingman, Arizona

Barstow, California

San Bernardino, California

Los Angeles, California

Route 66 was never a coast to coast road - it started at Chicago, Illinois, one third of the way across the continent.

Route 66 was the road taken by many of migrants from the dustbowl region to the crop growing areas of California during the Great Depression years.

Nowadays, just about the entire length of Route 66 has been replaced by Interstates. However, some historical sections of the old highway have been preserved.

Santa Fe Trail

Fort Union National Monument, just off I-25 in New Mexico, lies on the route of the Santa Fe Trail.

The Trail of Tears

The Trail of Tears is the name given to the forcible eviction in the late 1830's by federal troops of some eighteen to twenty thousand people who formed the majority of the Cherokee tribe, from the area around the Great Smoky Mountains three hundred miles west to "Indian Territory" (present-day Oklahoma), following the discovery of gold on their tribal lands. About four thousand died due to hunger, disease and exposure on the way.

Trans-Canada Highway

See the Trans-Canada Highway page.

Wilderness Road

The historic Wilderness Road ran for over 200 miles from the Holstein River Valley in western Virginia, via eastern Tennessee and the Cumberland Gap to central Kentucky. One route branched west to Nashville and the other went north to Louisville. The road was cleared and marked in the 1770's by Daniel Boone and a party of thirty axmen. For the next fifty years the Wilderness Road was the main migration route for about 200,000 people who settled Tennessee and Kentucky. The Wilderness Road was also known as Boone's Trace. Some present-day highways follow the same route.

Scenic Roads