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The nation's earliest efforts to create an interstate transportation system began, ended or passed through Cumberland, Maryland. The Queen City was the beginning of the Cumberland/National Road, a strategic spot for competing railroads aiming to move manufactured goods, coal and other natural resources to the nation, and the Western terminus of the C&O Canal.

This year marks the 200th Anniversary of the ground breaking for the first federally funded road in America, the Cumberland/National Road. It started in Cumberland, in 1811, and was built West to Vandalia, Illinois. Later, other road routes connected to the Cumberland/National Road to create today's National Road (US 40).

Cumberland was a major railroad town as well. It was the B & O Railroad's Western terminus from 1842 to about 1850, and the home of the B & O's Queen City Hotel, round houses, tin shops and a rolling mill. Other railroads serving Cumberland included the Cumberland & Pennsylvania, the Western Maryland, the Georges Creek and the Pennsylvania Railroad.

As terminus to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, Cumberland was a busy boat building center and transfer point for the coal from the Western Maryland mines being shipped East along the canal waterway.