Old Forest Road

The main route through the great forest originally known as Greenwood the Great and latterly as Mirkwood. Where the Road crossed the Great River, there was originally a stone bridge, but by the later years of the Third Age the bridge had been lost and the river was crossed by the Old Ford. From there, a traveller following the road eastward would cross some miles of open country before plunging into the depths of the forest (and it was from this point that the road properly became the Old Forest Road). The road then ran directly eastward from one side of the forest to the other, covering more than two hundred miles beneath the canopy of trees before it emerged by the banks of the River Running.

Of the origins of the Road we know little for certain. We have references to it from the earlier Second Age, and we can be sure that it existed before the end of that Age, because a record exists of the stone bridge being specially strengthened to carry the armies of the Last Alliance. A strong clue to its origins is presented in its Sindarin name, Men-i-Naugrim, meaning 'Dwarf-road'. The Dwarves had a tradition of road-building dating back to before the First Age, and it seems that they must have built the Forest Road to carry traffic between their western and eastern clans. It's particularly notable that the old bridge over the Anduin at the Road's western end lay almost exactly halfway between the ancient Dwarvish meeting-place at Gundabad to the north, and Durin's mansions of Khazad-dûm to the south.

Heavy rains and tremors in the later years of the Third Age caused the marshes of the Long Lake to extend far southward, making the eastern fringes of the forest impassable. By the year III 2941 (the year that Thorin and Company travelled to the Lonely Mountain), the Old Forest Road still ran beneath the trees of Mirkwood, but the road's eastern end had become lost in the morasses of the Long Marshes.