The Great West Road dated back to the earliest days of Gondor, and ran along the feet of the White Mountains until it reached the Fords of Isen in the west, before carrying on across Enedwaith as the North-South Road. Some fifty miles before it reached the Fords, a smaller road split off and led southwards into the Mountains. This was the Deeping-road, that led into the wide valley of the Deeping-coomb and on to the Hornburg and Helm's Deep. Those defences had been built by the first Gondorians, and so it seems likely that the course of the Deeping-road dated back some three thousand years at the time of the War of the Ring.