A trade and military road was already mentioned in Ptolemy's Geography about 150 AD, parts of it formed the medieval Westphalian Hellweg trade route, vital for the transport of salt and crops, and the course of the Via Regia, the Ottonian "royal road" trough the Holy Roman Empire from Aachen to Magdeburg.
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From the late 18th century onwards, parts of the route were rebuilt as a chaussee, mainly in the area between Aachen and Jülich as well as on the nearby territory of the County of Mark, promoted by the Brandenburg-Prussian administration under Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein.
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After Napoleonic Wars and the Empire's dissolution in 1806, the Prussian monarchs systematically expanded the road network, completing the chaussee between Berlin and Magdeburg in 1824, and between Berlin and Königsberg in 1828, reaching the East Prussian terminus at Gumbinnen (present-day Gusev, Russia) in 1835.
Bundesstraße | Bundesstraße 4 | Bundesstraße 6 | Bundesstraße 27 | Bundesstraße 14 | Bundesstraße 10 | German ''Bundesstraße'' 437 near Stadland | Bundesstraße 8 | Bundesstraße 71 | Bundesstraße 51 | Bundesstraße 300 | Bundesstraße 299 | Bundesstraße 248 | Bundesstraße 242 | Bundesstraße 16 |
The river Strothe rises on the Barnacken, near the B 1 federal road, and flows in a southwesterly direction alongside the B1 from Horn-Bad Meinberg in the northeast to Schlangen in the southwest and which continues as the Thune before discharging into the river Lippe.
It crosses the Dutch-German border as a continuation of the Dutch A67 and crosses the Rhine, leads through the Ruhr valley toward Bochum, becoming B 1 (Bundesstraße 1) at the Kreuz Dortmund West and eventually mergeing into the A 44 near Holzwickede.