The steep bluff behind the West Brownsville tongue provided two climbable ascents which became early U.S. roads; the more southerly heading nearly due west climbing steadily upwards over a 2 miles stretch, an old wagon road, and later the National Road following the westward extension of Nemacolin's Path up to and through the outlier neighborhood known as Malden from a river-shallows area known as a ford to Amerindians, a landscape feature which attracted settlers heading west on the Emigrant Trail once known as Nemacolin's Path, then the Cumberland Road and then renamed as the 'National Road'.