In many ways, U.S. history is the story of migration … of Englishmen landing on Cape Cod and at Jamestown; of settlers pushing the Indians west; of people floating down rivers and chopping down forests to break through the mountains and get to riches just beyond their reach; of immigrants from all over who somehow, someway, find a way to get here.

That’s why my recent vacation to Maryland and western Pennsylvania was so interesting. We abandoned the interstates to follow the old National Road — the first federal road project — and the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, once so vital, now long abandoned. Both are filled with the ghosts of the past.

The National Road (U.S. 40) stretched from Cumberland, Md., to Vandalia, Ill. The canal was a manmade river that connected Washington, D.C., and Cumberland. Both were built using immigrant labor, mules, horses, picks and shovels. The projects required the construction of beautiful stone-arch bridges, aqueducts, dams, tunnels, stables and locks. To me, building the Pyramids seems rather easy by comparison.

The National Road carried untold thousands of pioneers west, including the parents of Danville’s U.S. Rep. Joseph G. “Uncle Joe” Cannon, who emigrated from North Carolina to Indiana in 1840. Joseph Cannon, who was to serve in Congress for 46 years and eventually become its speaker, was only 4 then. He remembered that long, colorful journey all his life, and with fondness. He felt privileged to have been part of the pageant of a young nation.

The National Road was authorized by Congress in 1806 and begun in 1811. It was a tremendous engineering achievement, providing a level, paved road at a time when almost every other path through the forest was full of stumps and holes deep enough to break a wagon wheel. On the National Road, a stagecoach could travel an astounding 60 to 70 miles in a single day; the heavy Conestoga wagons, used for freight and family travel, averaged about 15.

In its eastern stretches, much of the road followed the “Braddock’s Road,” constructed by British Gen. Braddock during the French and Indian War in the 1750s. The National Road reached the Ohio River at Wheeling, W.Va., in 1818, and Vandalia in the 1830s. It opened the Ohio River Valley and the Midwest to settlement and commerce.

In Maryland and Pennsylvania, the countryside is lovely, and the highway follows the natural contours of hills and valleys. At Clear Spring, we dipped our fingers into the cool water of the spring that refreshed the early travelers and their animals. Near Uniontown, Pa., where Col. George Washington narrowly escaped death at age 22 at Fort Necessity, we toured the Mount Washington Tavern, an 1830s inn that catered to the stagecoach trade. We ate dinner in an inn that opened its doors in 1822.

I was surprised to see how many buildings from the 1820s, 1830s and 1840s were still standing — serene, understated Federal-style structures with double end-chimneys, almost always constructed of sandstone or brick. Many of the towns and villages haven’t changed much in 175 years. All the houses and businesses still line the National Road. They form long lines, cheek by jowl, and have no front yards. It presents an interesting snapshot of the past.

The story of the National Road is told well at the National Road Interpretive and Education Center at Fort Necessity. After the Pennsylvania Railroad reached Pittsburgh in 1852, the National Road began to die; hundreds of tap rooms and inns closed. By 1879, a writer for Harper’s called it a “glory departed … octogenarians who participated in the traffic will tell an enquirer that never before were there such landlords, such taverns, such dinners, such whiskey … or such an endless cavalcade of coaches and wagons.”

But U.S. 40 came along in the 1920s, following the path of the National Road. Interstate highways took much of the traffic away in the 1950s and 1960s, leaving the historic route to local traffic and history buffs. It’s a wonderful trip into the past.

The C & O Canal was built between 1828 and 1850. The 66-foot-wide waterway followed the Potomac River for nearly 185 miles. It was expensive to build and maintain, but it opened western Maryland and western Pennsylvania to eastern markets. Replaced by railroads decades ago, today it is a quiet, quaint reminder of another era.

The hundreds of canal boats were pulled on ropes by mules, and the towpath where the mules once walked is nice and level — perfect for walking and bicycle riding.

One of my favorite spots was called, simply, “Four Locks,” near McCoy’s Ferry, Md. Within a quarter mile are four stone locks in which canal boats were raised and lowered to get through a particularly hilly section. A rare mule barn still stands, as does the house once occupied by a lockkeeper. Because it’s out in the middle of nowhere, it’s a little slice of the 1830s that is rare today. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture how bustling it had to have been.

Recognizing its historical importance, Congress established the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Historical Park in 1971 to protect what remained. Much of the credit should go to U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who helped block construction of a highway on the old towpath in the 1950s.

He called the abandoned canal “a refuge, a place of retreat, a long stretch of quiet and peace.”

Well said. That’s what I found there, too.

Danville native Kevin Cullen is a former Commercial-News reporter. Reach him at irishhiker@aol.com.