Man working to tell story of communities on the National Road

Kristin Harty Barkley

CUMBERLAND — Steve Colby wants to tell a forgotten story.

It’s about a road, but not just about a road. It’s about the communities along the road, about the lives and livelihoods that have thrived there over the course of a couple of centuries.

It all started back in 1811, at the corner of Greene and Bridge streets.

“That was where construction started on the road,” said Colby, who has started “The Cumberland Road Project” to celebrate the upcoming 200th anniversary of the road. “There’s a little stone marker there that marks the spot.”

America’s first federally- funded interstate highway, the Cumberland Road has gone by different monikers over the years, including the the National Turnpike, the National Road, the National Highway, and U.S. Route 40, to name a few.

The history of how it came to be — the planning, the politics, the construction — has been well-documented, Colby said. He doesn’t want to repeat all that.

“What I hope to do is use the road as a focal point for stories about towns and businesses and families that grew up along the road,” said Colby, who is seeking help from the community.

Anyone with photographs, information, family stories or other observations about the Cumberland Road is invited to share them as part of the anniversary project. Colby has developed a Web site (www.cumberlandroadproject.com) to present the collection.

Though he didn’t grow up in Cumberland, Colby was born here and has a penchant for history and mystery, he said. For the 200th anniversary, he wants to capture the essence of the original Cumberland Road — not just its current path.

“Essentially everyone’s forgotten the original road,” said Colby, who has made a hobby/obsession out of finding pieces of what he calls the “Lost Highway.” Posted on his blog are photos of an original stone culvert/bridge on the Old National Pike, now Braddock Road, above Highland Street in Cumberland.

“I think as Baby Boomers get older, we seem to have more of an appreciation of history and the fact that we’re losing it,” Colby said. “Down on Braddock Road, just past Sunset Drive, there’s a remnant of a staircase that I was told used to be a nightclub that burned down in the 1950s. If we don’t have those kinds of things written down, when the people who knew about them are gone, we’ve lost them.”

Contact Kristin Harty Barkley at kharty@times-news.com.