It was called the Bayley Hazen Road, named after the two engineers who worked on it, and it was an attempt to make it easier for troops and equipment to get from New England to Canada.

Prior attempts to move materiel were fraught with sickness and the need to navigate various forms of terrain, including waterways and deep mud, which made the journey so much longer that it wasn’t practical anymore.

Bayley proposed creating a road that would not only make it easier to move things, it would cut the overall trip by about a third. What a great idea! thought George Washington. Get on it right away!

In the span of six weeks, they had almost a third of the road completed. And then they realized there was an important tactical problem with the Bayley Hazen Road: like every other road, it runs in two directions.

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