Semi-Centennial Volume. 205 



Road Company started work on that road in 1792, and completed it in 

 1794, at a cost of $465,000. The road was started 100 feet wide, but it 

 proved so expensive that it was reduced to almost one-half that width. 

 This road was very straight, except when detours were absolutely neces- 

 sary to reduce the grades. It is to-day paralleled by the Pennsylvania 

 Railway almost the entire distance. Not only was it laid out well and 

 constructed of generous width, but the construction was well done. The 

 stones used were required to pass a two-inch ring, and were thoroughly 

 compacted by allowing traffic over each layer before another was applied. 



This road had no competition for twenty-one years, and then the horse 

 cars and canals came. It was then left to deteriorate until the public re- 

 fused to pay the tolls. Seventeen miles were abandoned in 1880, and 

 taken up by the townships, which have placed these sections in fine con- 

 dition. Ten miles, however, was retained until 1899 when it was sold to a 

 traction company for $10 per share. These shares originally cost $300 

 per share, and out of the 1,200 shares first issued, 200 were kept as sou- 

 venirs or were lost. 



The finest i-oad of that period was the Cumberland Road, generally 

 know as the National Road, because it was and is yet the only great road 

 constructed by the national government. The hardships endured on the 

 road by those who went to settle in Ohio and Kentucky prevented many 

 others from attempting the trip, and this barrier of bad roads was not 

 only hindering the further development of these states, but was also con- 

 tributing to the general feeling of unrest which made the western settlers 

 think that perhaps they should organize a separate government. Henry 

 Clay, being a Kentuckian, became an earnest advocate of a national high- 

 way connecting the West with the East, which was Washington's cher- 

 ished dream. The project received a great impetus when Albert Gallatin, 

 secretary of the treasury in 1806, urged such works of internal improve- 

 ment. The first appropriation of $30,000 was made March 29, 1806, and 

 the last on June 17, 1844, a total of $6,824,919.23 being appropriated for 

 this road. The original estimate of the road was $6,000 per mile, but 

 actually cost $9,745 per mile from Cumberland, Maiyland, to Uniontown, 

 Pennsylvania, and $13,000 per mile from Uniontown to Wheeling, Vir- 

 ginia, now West Virginia. The excessive cost of the second portion was 

 probably due partly to too liberal contracts. The road was started in 1811 

 and during the next thirty years was completed to Indiana and graded 

 part of the way across Illinois. The portion built to Wheeling was com- 

 pleted in 1818, and at once became the most famous American highway. 

 Over this sixty-foot rock road passed a constant stream of wagons, mostly 

 bound for the plains of the fertile valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi 

 rivers. The enthusiasm of the western settlers knew no bounds when it 

 became known that the road was to be constructed, and from that time the 

 East and West were tied together firmly. In fact, the effect upon the 

 political life of the western territories was even greater than upon their 

 commercial life, because long before the road actually reached them, a new 

 and more rapid form of transportation was developed. When the rail- 

 roads finally took almost all of the interstate commerce and travel, the 

 road was abandoned without completing it, as first planned, to the Missis- 

 sippi river. 



