National roads can refer to various roads in several countries:

The National Road or Cumberland Road was the first major improved highway in the United States to be built by the federal government. Construction began heading west in 1811 at Cumberland, Maryland, on the Potomac River. It crossed the Allegheny Mountains and southwestern Pennsylvania, reaching Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia), on the Ohio River in 1818. Plans were made to continue through St. Louis, at confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and to Jefferson City upstream on the Missouri. Following the panic of 1837 however, funding ran dry and construction was stopped at Vandalia, Illinois, after crossing the states of Ohio and Indiana.

Beyond the National Road's eastern terminus at Cumberland and toward the Atlantic coast, a series of private turnpikes were completed in 1824, connecting the National Road with Baltimore, Maryland and its port on Chesapeake Bay; these feeder routes formed what is referred to as an eastern extension of the National Road. In 1835, the road east of Wheeling was turned over to the states for operation as a turnpike. It came to be known as the National Pike, a name also applied to the Baltimore extension. The road's route between Baltimore and Cumberland continues to use the name National Pike or Baltimore National Pike today, with various portions now signed as U.S. Route 40, Alternate U.S. 40, or Maryland 144. A spur between Frederick, Maryland, and Georgetown in Washington, D.C., now Maryland Route 355, bears various local names but is sometimes referred to as the Washington National Pike;^{[citation needed]} it is now paralleled by Interstate 270 between the Capital Beltway (I-495) and Frederick.