Old National Pike or Old National Road, and sometimes Old Cumberland Road, Old Route 40, Old U.S. 40 are terms both colloquially and officially applied to bypassed parts of the United States' first federally funded highway (1811), the

National Pike The National Road (also known as the Cumberland Road) was the first major improved highway in the United States built by the federal government. Built between 1811 and 1837, the road connected the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and was a main tra ...

which are essentially the parts of

U.S. Route 40 U.S. Route 40 or U.S. Highway 40 (US 40), also known as the Main Street of America, is a major east–west United States Highway traveling across the United States from the Mountain States to the Mid-Atlantic States. As with most routes wh ...

(1920s) west of

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was d ...

and east of Missouri. Terms such as the'' 'Old National Pike' ''and'' 'Old National Road' ''are similar terms frequently built into the local business structure as official addresses, in advertising and generally refer to older roadway parts (passing through congested business or residential neighborhoods) which have been replaced by newer, more convenient highways or in most cases modern multi-lane

super-highway A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It is used for major roads, but also includes other public roads and public tracks. In some areas of the United States, it is used as an equivalent term to controlled-access ...

s. As the first National Highway, with the first ever congressional funding for a U.S. road, the highway grew with the nation. When the Interstate Highway system was funded, and sometimes locally as some cities, counties or states improved their own local highway networks, stretches of road containing a lot of turns, frequent stops (traffic signals), and-or narrow hard to widen ways and roadbeds, stretches of local roads became bypassed and locally named "Old National Pike". This is a partial list of those ambiguous names about the United States: Eight stretches of older highways, Special routes of U.S. Route 40, have been granted federal support to maintain and sign by-passed roads as named variant of nearby wider U.S. 40 routes; the route markers carry not only U.S. 40 designations, but auxiliary signs such as: "Alternate", "Business", "Truck", "Scenic", etc. Some of these varieties of 'Old National Pike' are linked below.

List and descriptions of roads denoted Old National Pike

* (Hagerstown–Frederick, Maryland): Hagerstown to Frederick, Maryland * Old National Pike (Brownsville, Pennsylvania)e.g. "Old National Pike Bridge" crosses the river (Official namings), alternate colloquially, Old U.S. Route 40 —Extends from the Market Street elevated bridge, down the lower town main street to the jct. of High Street, turning across the Old National Pike Bridge, to the left turn up the hill past Denbo Heights several miles to Malden where it rejoins the four-lane highway.

References

{{Authority control U.S. Route 40 National Road