Where Are the Oldest Roads in the World?

At 5,000 years old, The Ridgeway outside of Oxford, England, is the oldest continuously used road in the UK and possibly the world. Author J.R.R. Tolkien is said to have drawn inspiration from the ancient path—which winds through Shire-like rolling hills and past neolithic stone monuments—when writing the Lord of the Rings series. 

The Ridgeway cuts across the verdant chalk downs of southern England and follows the natural, curving ridge line of the hills. Signs of ancient human activity are everywhere along the 87-mile road, notably the massive sarsen stones dotting the landscape and clustered in a mysterious circle at Avebury, a solstice site that predates Stonehenge. The Bronze-age Uffington White Horse is a 3,000-year-old rendering of a galloping horse carved into a chalk hillside along the road.  

Now a National Trail open to walkers and hikers, the Ridgeway once served as a defensive perimeter during the Iron Age, a military road for Saxon armies and a livestock trail for bringing animals to market in Medieval times.

The King’s Highway is so old it was already famous when the authors of the Old Testament wrote the story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt. In the Book of Numbers, Moses asks the king of Edom if the Israelites can pass through his territory in modern Jordan: “We will not pass through field or vineyard or drink water from any well; we will go along the King’s Highway, not turning aside to the right hand or to the left until we have passed through your territory.” 

The King’s Highway, or Darb ar-Raseef ("paved road" in Arabic), dates to at least the eighth century B.C. and was once a major trade route between Egypt and the Fertile Crescent that passed through Jordan. When the rock-carved city of Petra was a Nabatean stronghold 2,000 years ago, spices and incense from Arabia arrived along the King’s Highway. 

The Roman emperor Trajan paved the King’s Highway in the first century A.D. to accommodate carts and renamed it Via Nova Traiana. For centuries, it served as a pilgrimage route for Christians and Muslims visiting holy sites and making the hajj to Mecca. Today, the King’s Highway is known as Highway 35 in Jordan, a modern road winding its way from the capital, Amman, south to Aqaba on the Red Sea.  

Stretching more than 2,200 miles, the Grand Trunk Road is a legendary thoroughfare that runs from Afghanistan to Bangladesh while passing through the heart of India and Pakistan. Today, the GT Road is a busy highway, but it began in the fourth century B.C. as a section of the Silk Road known as the Uttarapath (“northern route”).  

In the 16th century, the route was greatly improved and became known as the Shah Rah-e-Azam (“the Great Road”). Emperor Sher Shah Suri widened the road, planted shade and fruit trees along the route, and constructed rest stations called sarais where travelers could eat and sleep in safety and comfort.  

Over the millennia, the east-west road facilitated more than the trade of physical goods—it helped to spread ideas like Buddhism and Islam across the Indian subcontinent. In the 19th century, the British renamed it the Grand Trunk Road and used it as a central artery to enforce colonial rule. Rudyard Kipling, in his novel Kim, described the Grand Trunk Road as “such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world.” 

The Appian Way, or Via Appia Antica, is the oldest and most famous of the cobbled Roman roads that once connected the vast Roman Empire. Known as the regina viarum or "queen of all roads," the road starts in the heart of Rome and runs roughly 400 miles to Brindisi on the Adriatic Sea.  

The Appian Way began as a military road built by Roman censor Appius Claudius Caecus in 312 B.C. to resupply Roman troops fighting outside the city. Over the following centuries, the road extended all the way to the coast and became a key transport route for people and goods traveling to Greece, Egypt and Asia Minor.  

To make travel easier, the Appian Way boasted mile markers, rest stations and water fountains for people and animals. Even better, there were no tolls!  

Today, visitors to Rome can still walk the first 10 miles of the Appian Way in the Parco Appia Antica and admire the durability of Roman engineering. The road was paved with large cobblestones of hard volcanic rock with soft gravel compacted between them as cement.  

At the height of its power in the 15th century, the Inca Empire was the largest in the Americas. Key to the empire's success was a 25,000-mile network of roads that enabled speedy trade and communication across a vast territory extending from its capital, Cuzco, in the Andes.  

The origins of the Inca Road System (or Qhapaq Ñan) are lost to time, but the network was greatly expanded and improved in the 15th century under Pachacuti, the Inca emperor who also built Machu Picchu. To cross difficult, mountainous terrain, Inca engineers built suspension bridges and carved deep stairways into stone. They also dug channels to divert water from the road and prevent erosion.  

The Inca Road System—with its spiderlike network of major and minor roads—so effectively connected mountains, rainforests and coasts that it unified millions of people under the same culture, economy, religion and military. Today, hikers on the breathtaking Inca Trail to Machu Picchu traverse portions of the original Inca Road System.  

The oldest continuously used road in the United States is the Boston Post Road, which first connected New York City and Boston in 1673.  

The Boston Post Road was originally a mail route—the very first in the American Colonies. It followed footpaths long used by Native Americans to traverse the countryside. Stagecoaches began using the road in the 1780s, allowing George Washington to tour New England in 1789 (the origin of “George Washington slept here.”).  

The Boston Post Road eventually became part of the King’s Highway, a 1,300-mile route that connected colonial America from Charleston, South Carolina, to Boston. Historic mile markers from the Boston Post Road can still be found along modern roads in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York that trace its original route.