Five hundred years ago the only roads on this continent were scattered Indian trails and broad, hard-packed traces beaten out by millions of buffalo in their search for food. Today, like a giant network, more than three million miles of roads lace the continent together.

This is the story of those roads—how they were built and why, and what they are today. Some of them developed from rugged Indian portage paths, others from the mail or "post" roads of Colonial days, while still others followed the routes of the pioneers in their migration to the West. And always, along with the roads themselves, are stories of the people who built them and who rode over them.

There were the early stagecoach travelers who, before starting a journey over the rutted and dangerous roadways, often made out their wills. And Daniel Boone, who went into the wild and beautiful Kentucky country and carved out an important road—called, appropriately, the Wilderness Road; the rough, tough, cigar-smoking drivers of Conestoga wagons who boasted they'd arrive at their destination "with bells on"; the eighteen-year-old boys who rode hard and long in the Pony Express to bring the mails through; the truck drivers, modern wagoners, who deliver the goods, night and day, over today's highways.

The Story of American Roads provides the reader with a first-class adventure in history. It is a book to read at home or keep in the glove compartment of the car and take along on tour.

From the dust jacket