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Braddock's Road was blazed in 1755 between Cumberland, Maryland, and Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania by forces led by General Edward Braddock of the Coldstream Guards. Braddock's engineers followed a native footpath previously known as Nemacolin's Path. Braddock's Road roughly parallels Route 40 between Cumberland and Laurel Ridge, near Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
Braddock's forces were defeated by the French and made a hasty retreat back to Cumberland along the road they had just created. Braddock, who was mortally wounded in the battle, was buried in the middle of the road about a mile west of Fort Necessity. His remains were eventually disinterred and reburied with full military honors on a knoll about a hundred feet from their original burial place.
Most of Braddock's Road has been lost and hidden by nature. In the early 20th century, Harvard professor John Kennedy Lacock and photographer E. K. Weller researched the road and documented its remains on maps and in dozens of photographs. Lacock wrote an extensive article for the Pennsylvania Magazine of History. Weller's photographs were published as B&W and hand colored postcards. Click here to read Lackck's article merged with his postcard images.
In recent years, Bob Bantz, has picked up where Lacock left off. Bantz has resurveyed the original road and documented it in far greater detail - and correcting a few errors made by Lacock.
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