The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a logistical system of jungle routes that ran from North Vietnam (communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam) to South Vietnam (the Republic of Vietnam) and through the neighboring kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia, which were used as sanctuaries into which the Viet Cong guerrillas ran when they were attacked during the Vietnam War (1959 – 1975). This system provided support, in the form of manpower and materiel, to the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, or derogatively, Viet Cong, and the North Vietnamese Army.
The trail was a complex maze of clandestine truck dirt roads, paths for foot and bicycle traffic, and river transportation systems which functioned as important supply lines for the Viet Cong in their war against the South Vietnamese Army and American forces deployed there. The name, taken from North Vietnamese president Ho Chi Minh, is of American origin. Although the trail was mostly in Laos, the communists called it the Truong Son Strategic Supply Route, after a mountain range in central Vietnam. According to the U.S. National Security Agency’s official history of the war, the Trail system was "one of the great achievements of military engineering of the 20th century."
The Ho Chi Minh Trail was built by the North Vietnamese Army to carry war supplies to the south. This network of jungle paths was originally coded 559, but eventually became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The trail’s construction began on May 9, 1959, with the establishment of Military Transport Division 559, which was composed of 440 young men and women. Despite intense American air strikes, the trail carried more than one million North Vietnamese soldiers and vast quantities of supplies to battlefields in South Vietnam over the next 16 years.
