(birds chirping) (soft drumming) [Narrator] May 29th, 1755.

In a crude military camp 100 miles northwest of Washington, D.C., the sound of drums echoed over the Appalachian Mountains, signaling those gathered that the time had come.

[Soldier] March!

[Narrator] It was year two of the French and Indian War and British General Edward Braddock was tasked with attacking the French troops at Fort Duquesne in modern day Pittsburgh.

But, in order to get there, he first needed to build a road some 125 miles through the untamed wilds of the frontier.

[Narrator] Their efforts would culminate in a disastrous battle.

Hundreds would lose their lives, including Braddock himself.

But, this isn't the story of Braddock's defeat.

This is the story of Braddock's road and the legacy it left behind.

[Announcer] Braddock's Road: A Legacy Unearthed was produced in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration.

The Maryland Department of Transportation.

We're on the road with you.

♪ ♪ [Narrator] In just a few centuries of American history, over four million miles of road have been built, arteries of commerce and culture criss-crossing the nation.

And, that number grows by the day.

It's 2019 and construction is underway on U.S. Highway 219 in mountainous Garrett County.

[Tom Fulton] The project is the new U.S. Route 219 from the interchange at I-68 one and a half miles towards the Pennsylvania line.

Currently, we're felling trees, hauling them out so that we can get in here and start our earth work.

[Narrator] If General Braddock and his men were making their ill-fated march today, they would likely pass within earshot of these massive earth-moving machines.

One of the most important stopping points along their journey was here at Little Meadows on the east side of 219.

And, so it happens that construction on one of the state's newest roads has meant unearthing the legacy of one of its oldest.

(talking in background) [Julie Schablitsky] One of the things that I know that what we wanted to do here is try and understand where exactly Braddock's road is located.

[Narrator] Julie Schablitsky is the chief of cultural resources with the Maryland Department of Transportation.

Back before work began on 219, her team was out at Little Meadows looking for any remaining traces of Braddock's road.

[Schablitsky] Archeologists are tasked with going out and doing surveys across the landscape 'cause we need to consider our impacts to these resources.

In this case, trying to find where General Braddock's road was located helps us know where to shift or perhaps design the highway.

We know where it is on one side to the west and to the east over here, but we have this big kind of abyss where the meadow is where we lose it completely.

[Narrator] Centuries of human activity, in particular the plowing of this field for agriculture, have obscured the historic route.

[Schablitsky] Time has simply erased it in here, so we really have to use our archeological tools to get in here and find where Braddock's road is located.

[Narrator] And Julie isn't the first to attempt tracing the famed military road.

Far from it.

More than a century ago, a Harvard-trained historian, John Kennedy Lacock, traversed this very field while mapping and photographing the length of Braddock's road.

In more recent decades, historians have used GPS to create even more accurate maps.

All of these efforts helped lay the groundwork for Julie and her crew to look beneath the soil surface.

[Narrator] But, what is it about this old road that inspires so much fascination?

[David Preston] Roads are one of the crucial ways in which humans shape the landscapes around them and Braddock's Road in particular was crucial in so many respects.

It was one of the early gateways to the Ohio Valley and to the West.

[Narrator] And an important tool of imperial domination during the French and Indian War.

David Preston is an historian of early America and author of the book Braddock's Defeat , which chronicles the construction of Braddock's road by the British army.

[Preston] By the early 1750's, the Ohio Valley had emerged as the most important center of imperial conflict between Britain and France and also the Indian nations that lived in that region.

And, each of these contestants wanted the Ohio Valley for different reasons.

[Narrator] The French, to secure the region's lucrative fur trade.

The British, to settle and establish colonies.

And, as for the region's native people, the Shawnee, Delaware and Iroquois, to preserve their power and independence.

[Preston] The English are much more expansionist and the natives generally see the French as the lesser of the threats.

[Narrator] The French, able to access the region using local waterways, staked their claim first, building Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Ohio River.

For the British, access was much more challenging with the Appalachian or Allegany Mountains presenting a formidable natural barrier.

So, in February of 1755, British General Edward Braddock landed in Virginia and prepared to lead an ambitious campaign across this rugged, unforgiving landscape.

[Preston] His objective is to capture Fort Duquesne, so Braddock needed to be able to bring siege artillery and there's only one way that you can get it across the mountains and it's on a well-engineered military road of the type that the British army had experience in building.

[Narrator] From Alexandria, Virginia, Braddock's forces headed west some 170 miles to the edge of the frontier, Fort Cumberland.

[Preston] And, then once the army had assembled at Fort Cumberland by the end of May 1755, they were poised for the most difficult part of their march, which was advancing across the rugged Appalachian Mountains.

[Narrator] These days, getting to the Little Meadows from Cumberland is a straight shot, just a 25 minute drive west on Interstate 68.

But, back in 1755, the route was much less certain.

[Preston] The woods of North America were intimidating, especially for the British regulars.

They're entering a landscape that they have never encountered before.

♪ (drum and fife plays) ♪ [Narrator] It took Braddock's road builders eight days to traverse just 24 miles, hindered by steep rocky slopes and old growth forests so dark and dense that they earned the nickname The Shades of Death.

A daily grind of cutting trees, leveling slopes, bridging bogs.

[Preston] When the army would wake at dawn, the working party would go out ahead of the army.

[Narrator] A military engineer would scout the road, choosing its course and marking trees or rocks to be removed.

[Preston] And, the working party composed of American provincial troops would clear mammoth trees.

Imagine these sawyers going out, leather aprons, hatchets, whipsaws, and they are having to cut down these trees and level them just enough for the wagons' axles to get across the stumps.

[Engineer] Level the ground there!

Axle height!

(singing) [Preston] You have diggers that are cutting into the sides of hills to create a graded and level road surface.

[Narrator] There were also miners tasked with using gunpowder to blast and remove large boulders, (boom) of which there were many.

Today, taking a walk along the remaining traces of the road helps paint a picture of the challenges Braddock and his men faced.

[Preston] We're here in the Savage River State Forest in western Maryland and I am standing in a trace of the old Braddock road.

This is located on the east face of Big Savage Mountain, which was unquestionably the most difficult geographical obstacle that General Braddock's army encountered during its entire march.

You can still see how rocky this eastern face of Big Savage Mountain is today and undoubtedly some of the rocks that we see here along the road today are remnants of the ones that these miners blew and ones that workers hurled up here out of the main roadway.

[Narrator] Not only was it rocky, but the climb was treacherously steep, as was the descent down the mountain's western face.

[Preston] They would have been attaching ropes to the axles of the wagons to try to tug against gravity.

In that process, they lost control of several of the wagons and they just went careening down this steep slope, the wagons themselves destroyed, precious wagons that the army could not afford to lose.

[Narrator] The following day, they arrived at the Little Meadows.

Behind schedule but desperate for a chance to regroup and plan their next steps, they set up camp.

And evidence of that encampment may still be hiding somewhere beneath the soil.

Back in the 21st century, Julie and her team are on the hunt with the help of metal detectors.

[Schablitsky] Think about what they would have dropped, what they would have lost along the way; transportation-related items, horseshoes, bridle bosses, even what the men were wearing, lost buttons, buckles, all from the colonial period.

[Narrator] But, discovering precisely where they camped or exactly how they traversed the meadow is a difficult task and not every metal detector hit is an historical score.

[Schablitsky] Looks like modern material.

Whenever you find a farm field, you're going to find metal.

Tractor parts.

Also, people hunt out here, so we're finding tons of shotgun shells and those read really nice on your metal detector because it could be a lead shot or a button.

[loud beeping) [Narrator] But persistence and thoroughness pays off.

[Archaeologist] Oh my!

That's a cut Spanish coin.

That is definitely not a tin can.

[Narrator] From period-appropriate currency known as pieces of eight, to 18th century musket balls.

[Archaeologist] Based on the size, it's about right to be a British musket ball from the period that we're looking for during the French and Indian War when Braddock came through.

[Narrator] With each find, Julie and her team seem to be inching closer and closer to their goal.

[Schablitsky] This could be part of a horse's bridle.

We can't unequivocally state that this is part of Braddock's encampment or that it was associated with Braddock's road completely, but we can say that it's related to transportation and that's what we're looking for.

[Narrator] Still, no one artifact can answer the big question.

Where is Braddock's road?

Instead, taken en masse, they may begin to paint a picture.

[Schablitsky] Once we get back to the lab, download where all of the metal detector hits are located, we can hopefully see a pattern and that pattern would be the swath of that road from the 1700's.

[Narrator] And, metal detectors are far from the only tool in the modern archeologist's arsenal.

While Julie and her crew focus on what remains beneath the soil, drone pilot Terry Kilby captures a bird's eye view of the field.

[Terry Kilby] It's technically a process called photogrammetry.

What that means is that from the air, you capture a series of overlapping photos straight down to the ground.

[Narrator] To be used in creating a 3D model.

[Kilby] So, today we're flying a total of six different batteries, so a total coverage area of about 250 acres.

All together, we'll probably end up with around 1,200, maybe 1,300 images once it's all said and done.

[Narrator] Once captured, the photos are run through special software.

[Kilby] What this software will do is it identifies key points from multiple photos and uses a triangulation algorithm to identify where those points would be located in the three dimensional space.

Now, you multiply that process out by several million times and you end up with what's known as a point cloud.

That point cloud is the start of creating a 3D model.

[Narrator] This model offers researchers like Julie a big picture perspective on this historic landscape.

[Kilby] And, they will use that for a number of different purposes, namely as backgrounds in their reports so they have a real map to lay their data over top of and they can also use it to help investigate and try to find the exact location of Braddock's road.

[Narrator] By identifying any landscape anomalies that might be hard to see from the ground.

For now though, back on land, there's excitement to be found in the little things, buckles and buttons, all of which offer a tangible link to the past.

[Schablitsky] They seem so prosaic, everyday, but these came from someone who walked and rode along this road over 250 years ago and that's something that also reminds us as archeologists.

It's not just about the things.

It's not just about a road.

It's about people and it's about the people who first called Maryland home.

[Narrator] In the case of Braddock's expedition, the people consisted of nearly 2,500 personnel.

There were British soldiers from the 44th and 48th regiments, but also colonial troops or provincials responsible for the actual road building, Royal Navy sailors to help with the movement of artillery and wagons, eight Ohio Iroquois scouts, enslaved people, and women.

[Preston] A crucial part of any 18th century army were female camp followers.

They provided logistical support for just the daily functioning of the army.

[Narrator] Braddock's forces also featured several familiar faces.

Daniel Boone, the storied American frontiersman, working as a wagon driver.

And, future Founding Father George Washington, an aide to General Braddock whose knowledge of the local landscapes would factor into one of the most important decisions of the entire expedition.

While encamped at the Little Meadows, Washington convinces Braddock that the only way to hasten the army's ponderous progress is to strike out ahead with a fast flying column.

So, strike out he does, and three weeks later, on July 9th, 1755, the British surmount their last great natural obstacle, the crossing of the Monongahela River.

[Preston] They felt that if the French were going to attack them, that that would be the place.

[Narrator] But, the attack never comes.

The crossing is successful and General Braddock feels victory within his grasp.

[Preston] General Braddock has accomplished one of the most remarkable marches in all of American military history.

He is within about 10 miles of Fort Duquesne on July 9th, 1755 and it is on that day that he confronts a French and Indian force that's coming out of Fort Duquesne to meet him.

[Narrator] 250 French soldiers and six to seven hundred native allies.

The battle is a bloodbath.

[Preston] I still marvel at the scale of human loss in the space of about 4 hours of July 9th, 1755.

Two out of every three British soldiers who crossed the Monongahela River that day were either killed or wounded.

[Narrator] General Braddock himself was mortally wounded during the fighting, surviving just long enough to realize the magnitude of his defeat.

[Preston] Perhaps fittingly, his troops buried him underneath the road that they had earlier constructed.

[Narrator] But, while the expedition ultimately failed, Braddock's road itself irrevocably changed the way settlers navigated the frontier in the decades that followed.

[Preston] British forces finally did capture Fort Duquesne and took the Ohio Valley in the year 1758 and Braddock's road became one of the primary conduits for traders and civilians moving west into the Ohio country for decades to come.

[Preston] This sandstone rock is displaying wear from literally thousands of wagons that came through this region, beginning with Braddock's expedition in 1755 and continuing into the early 1800's.

So, all of these thousands of settlers, their wagon traffic over many years gradually eroded this rut in the soft sandstone that's still here.

This rock shows the importance of the continued use of Braddock's road and indeed the importance of this road as a conduit for America's westward expansion into the 19th century.

[Narrator] This flood of settlers changed the landscape in other, more significant, ways as well.

Nearly 30 years after the disastrous campaign, George Washington traveled Braddock's road once again.

His diaries from the trip describe rising tensions and land disputes between the new arrivals and the native people of the Ohio Valley, tensions that quickly boiled over into war and ultimately led to the forced relocation of native tribes to the west of the Mississippi.

Washington also details stays at inns and taverns now dotting the one time wilderness route.

-I set out with one servant only.

Dined at a Mr. Gwin's at the fork of the roads leading to Winchester and the Old Town.

And lodged at Tumberson's at the Little Meadows 15 miles further.

[Narrator] On period maps of the route, Tumberson's appears as Tomlinson's, also known as The Red House.

Today, a Tomlinson Inn sits along Route 40.

But, this stone inn built in 1818 isn't The Red House of Washington's day.

So, where did it go?

And, could finding it help archeologists locate the missing link in Braddock's road?

One year after Julie's metal detector survey of the Little Meadows, she and her crew are back and those are just a few of the questions they're hoping to answer.

[Schablitsky] How do we take what's known from the past, looking at old maps, looking at old oral testimony, and then take what we're finding in the ground and put it all together to solve that mystery?

[Schablitsky] So, last summer when we were out here doing a metal detector survey, trying to find out where Braddock and his men stayed, we found lots of interesting things.

We found buttons and buckles and pieces of eight, silver coins.

[Narrator] Unfortunately, though, no definite indication of the road bed itself.

[Schablitsky] But, the more interesting part to me was what we found just outside of that location.

While we were walking in the field here, we ended up finding bits of pipe stem, bones, ceramics.

[Narrator] Remnants of domestic rather than military presence.

[Schablitsky] And, it's like, where'd this stuff come from?

And so, this summer now we're back trying to figure out what this belonged to.

How did whatever was here relate to Braddock's road?

How does that all kind of work together on this historic landscape?

When we got in there and began to take away the brush and the weeds, there were rocks there.

There were boulders.

There were pits.

There used to be buildings out here.

[Schablitsky] Do you think this is, we're inside the building or do you think we're outside?

[Aaron Levinthal] I think we might possibly be within the building.

[Levinthal] Every transportation corridor has got things focused on it.

Commercial, domestic.

[Narrator] Aaron Levinthal is a consultant archeologist on the project.

[Levinthal] This is a landscape that's drastically different than it was 100, 200 years ago, and so the domestic site, house site, whether it was a small farmstead or what, is long gone.

There's nothing on the ground surface.

So, we're here to try and figure out the story of what the area looked like in the past.

[Schablitsky] How big was the structure?

Was it just a small building where a family lived?

Or, was it also a tavern?

And, how did the Tomlinson Inn, which was supposed to be built around 1818, relate to this structure?

[Narrator] Could this jumble of stones and pottery sherds possibly be that earlier inn, that haven for weary travelers headed west on Braddock's road more than 200 years ago?

[Levinthal] Mostly what we've been finding is domestic related artifacts, so a lot of kitchen stuff, tablewares, finer ceramics that you would use when you're sitting at a dining table.

And, then we have a lot of evidence of food preparation and storage, so you've got redware clay storage vessels.

[Schablitsky] Even though they're small and they don't look like much, they still tell us something about the people who lived here.

And, particularly in this case, where it's really, really important to find out who lived here, how far back does it go.

Does it date to the very early 1800's?

Does it go back to the 1700's when Braddock came through here?

(soft scratching) [Narrator] Colonial records tell us that the Red House Inn was in use starting in the 1760's.

[Schablitsky] So far, I can tell you right now with the artifacts, we're back to around 1800 but I don't see us into the 18th century yet.

The archeology isn't telling us that.

[Narrator] Meaning this mystery structure offers up more questions than it does answers.

Par for the course when it comes to archeology.

[Schablitsky] When you're looking at what's standing on the ground today, what's buried in the soil, the roadways that exist, the roadways that are gone, it's a complete puzzle.

Every little piece, we try to put together and we look at the picture again and if we still don't know what's going on, sometimes we have to go back to the archeology and dig more.

And, we never, ever get all of our questions answered but at least knowing a little bit more than we did before, sometimes that's all we need to, in a sense, rewrite the narrative.

[Narrator] So, while they may not have found the missing link in Braddock's road or nailed down the location of the Red House Inn, Julie and her crew uncovered plenty of new puzzle pieces in the form of artifacts and data, all carefully documented so that future researchers can revisit these as-of-yet unsolved mysteries.

But, until then, there's one surefire way to get a small taste of the landscapes Braddock and his men traversed centuries ago.

A drive down old Route 40, the national road which was built in the early 1800's to replace Braddock's road.

[Preston] The national road, a federally funded highway, was the principal reason why Braddock's road ceased to be used.

When one travels the national road today, it still is roughly in the same corridor as General Braddock's military road of 1755.

[Narrator] Though things have certainly changed since the days of that rough hewn military road.

construction on the newest road to cross the Little Meadows, Route 219, is a far cry from shovels and whipsaws.

[Todd Friend] You'll have your larger excavators.

You have your dozers which come through and do the grade work and we have the cranes that we use for setting the bridge girders or the form work.

Of course, you have your rollers and your pavers when you get to the point for the asphalt.

[Narrator] But one thing hasn't changed.

The importance of roads in opening up the countryside to travel, commerce and culture.

And, as for Braddock's Road, there may still be a few missing links but its legacy is very much intact.

[Announcer] Braddock's Road: A Legacy Unearthed was produced in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration.

The Maryland Department of Transportation.

We're on the road with you.

♪ (drum and fife plays) ♪