What is Cumberland? The answer is: a city and a gap with the same name, both playing important roles in the settling of the Ohio Valley, but not located together.

There are two Cumberlands of interest as they are both key points on the major routes from the East to the Ohio Valley. The two can be confusing because they are not the same thing and are not located in the same place. The Cumberland Gap is a natural break in the ridges of the Appalachian Mountains. Daniel Boon blazed the Wilderness Trail through this gap in 1775 and linked southwest Virginia with Tennessee and Kentucky. About one quarter of a million settlers followed him through this gap. The area of Cumberland Gap is shown on Map A by the orange transparent mark where Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky all meet (lower left section of map). The Gap itself is marked by the two black triangles point to point.

This map is Exploration and Settlement 1800-1820 from the U.S. National Atlas, 1970. Settlement has reached the Mississippi and beyond. Source: This map was downloaded from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection of the University of Texas at Austin.

The city of Cumberland is several hundred miles northeast of the Cumberland Gap. It is highlighted by the orange transparent mark in the northwest corner of Maryland (upper center of map). The town itself is indicated by a small round black dot indicating a smaller city or town. Located far up the Potomac Valley, it was the starting point for the National Road which heads west into Ohio and Indiana. An earlier road led from the port city of Baltimore to Cumberland. Later, the C&O canal would reach from Georgetown (Washington, DC) to Cumberland and then no further. The National Road provided a genuine road by which wagons and stage coaches could travel west. The famous Conestoga wagon, associated in our minds today with the trip to California or Oregon, was used here.