Dwarf-road

We have records of the Dwarf-road existing as early as the Second Age, when it served as a way for the Dwarves to travel from their mansions in the Misty Mountains to the Iron Hills beyond Greenwood the Great. The great Dwarf-city of Khazad-dûm in the Misty Mountains dated back into the First Age, and it is plausible that the Dwarf-road, too, was made even before the end of the Elder Days.

The Dwarf-road still existed at the end of the Third Age, but by the later decades of that Age it had become effectively unusable. A series of earthquakes attributed to Smaug in nearby Erebor, coupled with unusually heavy rains, caused the Long Marshes to extend southwards down the river Running and along the eastern edges of Mirkwood. Where the Dwarf-road emerged from beneath the trees, the roadway was lost among the waters of the marshes.