Who Invented Asphalt? From Ancient Bitumen to Edward de Smedt's Pavement

Nobody invented asphalt itself. Natural asphalt, or bitumen, seeps out of the ground and collects in pools and lakes, and people have used it for thousands of years to waterproof boats, set bricks and glue tools. What was invented was asphalt pavement as we know it. Belgian-born chemist Edward J. de Smedt is usually credited with developing the first true graded, compacted asphalt paving mix in the United States, laying a pavement in Newark, New Jersey, around 1870 and later paving major streets in New York and Washington, D.C. Modern hot mix asphalt, made with refined petroleum binder and carefully graded stone, grew out of that work over the following decades.

Asphalt vs tarmac →

Ancient Uses of Natural Bitumen

Archaeologists have found bitumen used as an adhesive and waterproofing material in the ancient Near East going back many thousands of years. Mesopotamian builders used it as mortar for baked bricks and to waterproof baths, drains and boats. Some ancient roads and walkways in the region were laid with bricks or stones set in bitumen. Later, bitumen from the Dead Sea area was traded widely, and it turns up in many ancient artifacts. Our article on bitumen of Judea covers that Dead Sea material and how it was later used in early photography.

These uses weren't paving in the modern sense. Bitumen was a glue and sealant, not the continuous smooth surface we drive on today.

Roads Before Asphalt

For most of history, good roads meant stone. The Romans built layered roads with cut stone surfaces. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Scottish engineer John Loudon McAdam popularized roads built from layers of small, angular broken stone compacted by traffic, a method called macadam. Macadam roads were cheaper and smoother than older roads, but they threw dust in dry weather and turned muddy when wet, problems that got worse once cars arrived. Binding the stone with tar or asphalt was the obvious next step.

Early European Asphalt Paving

In the early and mid-1800s, European cities experimented with natural rock asphalt, limestone naturally impregnated with bitumen, mined in places like Switzerland and France. Crushed and heated rock asphalt was compacted onto streets and sidewalks, and Paris and London paved some streets this way. These pavements proved quieter and easier to clean than stone blocks. In Britain, tar-bound macadam became common, and in 1902 Edgar Purnell Hooley patented "tarmac," a tar-and-stone mix. Our guide to asphalt vs tarmac explains how that name stuck.

Edward de Smedt and the First American Asphalt Streets

Edward J. de Smedt, a chemist who emigrated from Belgium, worked on asphalt paving at Columbia University in New York. He received U.S. patents around 1870 for methods of preparing and laying asphalt pavement, including grading the sand and stone and compacting the mix to high density. Key milestones often cited:

Approximate date	Milestone
1870	De Smedt lays an asphalt pavement in front of City Hall in Newark, New Jersey, often called the first true asphalt pavement in the U.S.
Early 1870s	Asphalt paving appears on streets in New York City, including near Battery Park and on Fifth Avenue
1876	Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., is paved with asphalt, largely using Trinidad lake asphalt

Sources differ slightly on exact dates and locations, as is common with 19th-century history, but de Smedt's role in establishing modern asphalt paving is widely recognized.

Trinidad Lake Asphalt and the "Asphalt King"

Much of the asphalt used on American streets in the late 1800s came from the Pitch Lake on the island of Trinidad, a natural deposit of asphalt. Entrepreneur Amzi Barber built a large paving business around imported lake asphalt and was nicknamed the "Asphalt King." Natural lake asphalt was refined, mixed with sand and stone, and laid hot on city streets. Asphalt from Trinidad is still mined today and used as an additive in some specialty mixes.

The Switch to Petroleum Asphalt

As the oil industry grew in the late 1800s and early 1900s, refineries began producing asphalt binder from crude oil residue. Refined asphalt was consistent, abundant and cheaper to deliver than imported natural asphalt, and it gradually took over. At the same time, the rise of automobiles created huge demand for smooth, dust-free roads. Mechanical mixing plants, spreaders and rollers improved, and by the middle of the 20th century hot mix asphalt had become the dominant surface on American roads. Our explainer on how asphalt is made describes the modern plant process that came out of this era.

Modern Milestones

• Mechanical pavers: self-propelled pavers with floating screeds became standard in the mid-1900s, giving smoother, more uniform mats.
• Interstate era: massive highway building programs expanded asphalt use and research.
• Recycling: milling and reusing old pavement became common from the 1970s onward.
• Superpave: a performance-based binder and mix design system developed from U.S. highway research in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
• Warm mix and additives: newer technologies lower production temperatures and tailor performance.

Why the Question Is Tricky

"Who invented asphalt" mixes up three different things: the material (natural, not invented), the practice of paving with it (developed gradually in Europe and the U.S. in the 1800s), and modern hot mix technology (refined over the 20th century by many engineers and agencies). De Smedt is the name most often given because his graded, compacted mix and early American streets bridged the gap between natural asphalt and modern pavement.

Books and Further Reading

For readers who enjoy road history, a history of roads book puts asphalt in the bigger story of transportation, and an automobile history book shows why cars drove demand for paved roads. Industry associations and state asphalt pavement associations also publish free history pages and timelines. For kids, a road construction picture book is an easy way to explain pavers and rollers.

Bottom Line on Who Invented Asphalt

Asphalt is a natural material used for thousands of years, so no one invented it. Asphalt pavement developed in 19th-century Europe and the United States, and Edward J. de Smedt is widely credited with the first true graded, compacted asphalt pavement in the U.S., laid in Newark around 1870. Refined petroleum binder, mechanical plants and pavers, and later research like Superpave turned that idea into the roads we drive on today.