Final answer:
The National Road was the highway that connected Cumberland, Maryland with Wheeling, West Virginia and played a significant role in facilitating westward expansion and improving national transportation infrastructure.
Step-by-step explanation:
The road that connected Cumberland, Maryland with Wheeling, West Virginia was called the National Road. One of the significant impacts of the Cumberland Road was that it gave settlers a quicker way to move west, thereby fostering westward expansion and development. It was also a critical component of the early 19th-century transportation revolution in the United States and was known for being a federally funded highway, pointing to the beginnings of national infrastructure investment for transportation.