The Cox's Road and Early Deviations - Hartley, Clarence Hilly Range and Mount Blaxland Precinct is a heritage-listed road at The Old Bathurst Road, Hartley in the City of Lithgow local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed and built by William Cox from 1814 to 1826 with the support of a convict road party. It is also known as Cox's Road and Early Deviations - Hartley, Clarence Hilly Range / Mount Blaxland Precinct and Coxs Road. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 25 March 2015. History The road from Emu Ford to Bathurst, a distance of was completed in only six months during 1814 and 1815 by a working party composed mostly of convicts. Governor Lachlan Macquarie decided to have a carriage road constructed across the Blue Mountains, to the country which had been "newly discovered" by Europeans in 1813. The ridges and valleys of the Blue Mountains, have been used as a transport corridor by people for tens of thousands of years. In the first 25 years of the settlement at Sydney Cove, several attempts were made to cross the mountains, but none resulted in a recognised successful crossing. Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Charles Wentworth, searching for new pasturage made their famous "first" crossing of the Blue Mountains in 1813. The so called "First Crossing" took place on the traditional lands of the Dharug, Gundungurra and Wiradjuri people. Other routes through the ridges and valleys of the Blue Mountains had been used by Aboriginal people for tens of thousands of years. Cox was born in Wimborne Minster, Dorset in 1764. He married Rebecca Upjohn at Clerkenwell, London in 1789. Cox arrived in NSW on board the "Minerva" in January 1800. Cox became Chief Magistrate at Windsor in 1810 and in July 1814 Governor Macquarie made William Cox the Superintendent of the works for a new road over the Blue Mountains. His first wife died in 1819 and Cox married Anna Blachford in 1821. He died on 15 March 1837. The hill now named Mount Blaxland is situated south-west of Mount York and south of Lithgow. In the published version of his journal, Gregory Blaxland wrote that on 31 May 1813: Mount Blaxland was named by Surveyor G. W. Evans, sent by Governor Macquarie to confirm the discovery of a passage over the Blue Mountains, in November 1813.