Famous Road - Highways

The famous roads of the planet are famous as routes of trade, exploration, or connecting the great nations or urban areas of the past or present. Some are famous for their role in history. Some are famous for their size such as the Pan - American Highway. A road is an identifiable route or path between two or more places. Roads are typically smoothed, paved, or prepared to allow easy travel; though they need not be, historically many roads were simply recognisable routes without formal construction or maintenance.

Trans-Canada Highway - Lam Kam Road - Appian Way (Roman Empire) - Blue Ridge Parkway (North Carolina) -

Yellow brick road - Grand Trunk Road (South Asia) - Oregon Trail - Royal Road - Santa Fe Trail - Silk Road - Silk Road (Asia) - Sardis's Collonaded Road - Appian Way (Via Appia) - The Fosse Way -

Burma Road - Rheinhöhenweg Trail - Watling Street - The Ridgeway

A USA Highway system. One of the original federal routes, US 66 was established on November 11th, 1926, though signs did not go up until the following year. It originally ran from Chicago, Illinois through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California before ending at Los Angeles for a total of 2,448 miles .

The Pan - American Highway

network of roads nearly 48,000 kilometres (29,800 miles) in length. Except for a 87 km rainforest gap, the road links mainland nations of the Americas in a highway system.

Famous sections of the Highway include the Alaska Highway and the Inter-American Highway, the latter being the section between the US and the Panama Canal. This part is quite popular among US tourists driving into Mexico.

The Pan-American Highway system is mostly complete and extends from Fairbanks, Alaska in North America to the lower reaches of South America. Several highway termini are claimed to exist, including the cities of Puerto Montt, Chile, Quellón, Chile and Ushuaia, Argentina. No route is officially defined in Canada and the US.

Highway 1 is Australia's coastal highway joining mainland state capitals and coastal towns circumnavigating the entire continent. At the total length of more than 20,000 km, it is the longest national highway in the world.

Highway 1 also goes through Tasmania. It starts in Hobart and then works its way past Launceston and up to Burnie.

The Trans - Canada Highway is a federal-provincial highway system that joins all ten provinces of Canada.

The system was approved by the Trans - Canada Highway Act of 1948, construction commenced in 1950, officially opened in 1962, and was completed in 1971. The highway system is recognizable by a distinctive white on green maple leaf

Unlike the American Interstate highway system, not all of the Trans - Canada Highway uses limited access freeways, or even four-lane roads, making it similar to the US Highway system.

Lam Kam Road ( is a road connecting Tai Po and Kam Tin. It passes through Lam Tsuen Valley. The Kadoorie Experimental Farm near the road is a famous spot for school visit.

The Appian Way (Latin: Via Appia) was the most important ancient Roman road. It ended in Brindisi, Apulia. Its importance is indicated by its common name,

The via Appia was the paradigm of all subsequent Roman roads. It was the very symbol of the republic, which brought order to the terrain and peace and freedom to the peoples of Italy.

The Roman army depended for its success on the use of bases in which to prepare itself for battle and to refresh and reequip itself after. Only bases allowed the Romans to keep large numbers in the field waiting for the opportunity to strike. In the late Roman republic they were masters of the art of logistics.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is a National Parkway and All American Road in the US, noted for its scenic beauty. It runs for 469 miles through the famous Blue Ridge, a major mountain chain that is part of the Appalachian Mountains. Land on either side of the road is maintained by the National Park Service. It is the longest, narrowest National Park in the world and is the most visited unit in the US National Park System. In many places, the park is bordered by land protected by the United States Forest Service.

The road of yellow brick is an element in the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In the book The Patchwork Girl of Oz it is revealed that there are two yellow brick roads from Munchkin Country to the Emerald City:

The Grand Trunk Road is one of South Asia's oldest and longest major roads. For several centuries, it has linked the eastern and western regions of the Indian subcontinent, passing right across the populous cities of Pakistan and India.

Today, the Grand Trunk Road remains a continuum that spans a distance of over 2,500 km and traverses three south Asian countries: Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. It starts from Peshawar in Pakistan and passes through Rawalpindi and Lahore before entering India at Wagah. Within India, it passes through Amritsar, Ambala, Delhi, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi and Kolkata. It enters Bangladesh and ends at Sonargaon in the Narayanganj district of that country.

The Oregon Trail was one of the key overland migration routes on which pioneers traveled across the North American continent in wagons settle new parts of the USA during the 19th c. The Oregon Trail helped the US implement its cultural goal of Manifest Destiny, that is, to build a great nation spanning the North American continent. The Oregon Trail spanned over half the continent as the wagon trail proceeded 2,170 miles west through territories and land later to become six US states (Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon). Between 1841 and 1869, the Oregon Trail was used by settlers to the North west and West Coast areas of what is now the US. Once the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, the use of this trail by long distance travelers diminished as the railroad slowly replaced it.

The course of the road has been reconstructed from the writings of Herodotus, archeological research, and other historical records. It began in the west in Sardis , 60 miles east of Izmir in present-day Turkey, traveled east through what is now the middle northern section of Turkey to the old Assyrian capital Nineveh (present-day Mosul, Iraq), then traveled south to Babylon. From near Babylon, it is believed to have split to two routes, one traveling north west then west through Ecbatana and on along the Silk Road, the other continuing east through the future Persian capital Susa (in present-day Iran) and then southeast to Persepolis.

The Santa Fe Trail was a historic 19th c transportation route across south west North America connecting Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico. First used in 1821 by it served a vital commercial and military highway until the arrival of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880. At first an international trade route between the USand Mexico, it served as the 1846 US invasion route of New Mexico during the Mexican - American War

The Silk Road, or Silk Route, is an interconnected series of routes through Southern Asia traversed by caravan and ocean vessel, and connecting Chang'an (today's Xi'an), China, with Antioch, Asia Minor, as well as other points. It extends over 8,000 km (5,000 miles). Its influence carried over into Japan and Korea.

These exchanges were significant for the development and flowering of the great civilizations of China, ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India and Rome but also helped to lay the foundations of the modern world.

Soon after the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC, regular communications and trade between India, Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, China, the Middle East, Africa and Europe blossomed on an unprecedented scale.

This city in Turkey has in it's area a Sardis's 4.5km colonnaded marble thoroughfare. In history this road, which still survives divided a city of Roman times of 120,000 people.

The Appian Way was the most important ancient Roman road. It started in Rome and ended in Brindisi, Apulia. It was known as the Queen of the Long Roads. The via Appia was the paradigm of all subsequent Roman roads. It was the very symbol of the republic, which brought order to the terrain and peace and freedom to the peoples of Italy, at least in their ideals. A road of such a high-spirited beginning can hardly have escaped a sanguinary history. Though professing freedom for themselves, the Romans took away freedom from their enemies foreign and domestic, enslaving them. On Spartacus's defeat the Romans judged the slaves had broken their contract and forfeited the right to live. In 71 BC they were executed by crucifixion, a standard method. Some 6000 crosses lined the via Appia all the way to Capua.

The Fosse Way was a Roman road in England which linked Exeter (Isca Dumnoniorum) in South West England, to Lincoln (Lindum) in the East Midlands, via Ilchester (Lindinis), Bath (Aquae Sulis), Cirencester (Corinium) and Leicester (Ratae Coritanorum).

The Fosse Way is the only Roman road in Britain to retain its original Latin name. Most others were named by the Saxons, centuries after the Romans left Britain.

It is remarkable for its extremely direct route: from Lincoln to Ilchester in Somerset, a distance of 182 miles, it is never more than 6 miles from a straight line. It is also important, as many archaeologists in the 20th Century, considered it the line between North and South. With the areas to the south often seeming more Romanised, and connected to the continental economy in the Roman era. But the idea it was a effective frontier in the early Roman years, of conquest had been discredited to some extent.

The Burma Road is a road linking Burma (also called Myanmar) with China. Its terminals are Kunming and Lashio, Burma. When it was built, Burma was a British colony.

The road is about 1,130 kilometres long and runs through rough mountain country. The sections from Kunming to the Burmese border were built by 200,000 Chinese laborers during the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and completed by 1938. It had a role in World War II, where the British used the Burma Road to transport war materiel to China before Japan was at war with the British. Supplies would be landed at Rangoon and moved by rail to Lashio, where the road started in Burma. After the Japanese overran Burma in 1942, the Allies began to fly supplies over the eastern end of the Himalaya mountains and, under the command of General Stillwell, built the Ledo Road to connect Assam in India to the Burma Road through territory in the far north of Burma still in allied hands.

trail on the mountains of the Rhine Valley. It leads from the Lower Rhine in Bonn passing the Loreley up to the Upper Rhine. There is a Rheinhöhenweg Trail on both sides of the Rhine River.

Watling Street is the name given to an ancient trackway in England and Wales that was first used by the Celts mainly between the modern cities of Canterbury and St Albans.

The Ridgeway is an ancient trackway described as Britain's oldest road. It is an 85 mile (137km) route that follows the chalk hills between Overton Hill, near Avebury and Ivinghoe Beacon in Hertfordshire. The route has been in use since neolithic times. It largely follows the top ridge of the chalk hills of the north west Downs and of the Chilterns - thus avoiding what were difficult woods and marshes in the valley below. It is felt stone age man was using this road, before Stonehenge, and before Britain became an island.

Geography sites

Forests of the planet

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