Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1879-10-16
The Old National Pike.

to, if his little Maud had proposed it?
The Old National Pike.
The traffic seems like frieze with an
endless procession of figures. There
were sometimes sixteen gaily painted
coaches each way day; the cattle and
sheep were never out of sight; the can
vas-covered wagons were drawn by six
or twelve horses with bows Of bells over
their collars; the families of statesmen
and merchants went by in private We
hicles; and while most of the travellers
were unOstentatious, few had splen-
did equipages, and employed Outriders.
Some of the passes through the Allie
ghenies were as precipitOus as any in the
Sierra Nevada, and the mountains as
wild. Within mile Of the road the
country was wilderness, but on the
highway the traffic was as dense and as
continuous as in the main street Of a
large town.
The National Road proper was built
from Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheel
ing, Virginia, by the United States gov
ernment, the intention being to estab-
lish it as far as st. Louis. 1t was excel
lently macadamized; the rivers and
creeks were spanned by stone bridges;
the distances were indexed by iron mile
posts, and the tOll-houses supplied with
strong iron gates. Its protector and
chief supporter was Henry Clay, whose
services in its hehalf are commemOrated
by monument near Wheeling. Henry
BeesOn, former Congressman, was also
an advocate of it, and on one occasion
he made a public speech in which he
showed the audience-sO flexible is
arithmetic combined with imagination
that from the number of hOrseshOes it
would necessitate, and the number of
nails, it was better adapted 10 promote
trade than any railway could be. From
Cumberland to Baltimore the road, or
large part of it, was built by certain
banks of Md, which were rechartered
in 1916 on condition that they should
complete the work. So far from being
a burden to them, it proved to be most
lucrative property for many years, yield
ing as much as twenty per cent, and it
is only Of late years that it has yielded no
more than two or three per cent. The
part built by the Federal government
was transferred to. Maryland some time
ago, and the tolls became a political per-
quisite; but within the past year it has
been acquired by the counties of Allie
gheny and Garrett, which have made it
free.
We have written of what is past The
canal and the railway have superseded
the old National pike" and it is not Of
ten now that traveller distW bs the
dust that lies npOn it. The dust itself,
indeed, has settled and given root to the
grass and shrubbery, which in many
places show how complete the deea-
denee is. The black snakes, moecasins,
and eopperheads, that were always
Ill Iuc l1dNC OCCOAIC
80 unused to the intrusion Of man that
they sun themselves in the road, and q
vehicle can not pass without running
over them. Many of the villages which
were prosperous in the coaching days
have fallen asleep, and the wagon Of a
peddler or farmer alone is seen where
once the travel was enormous. The men
who were actively engaged on the road
as drivers, station agents, and mail con-
tractors are nearly all dead. The few
that remain are very old, and while an
inquiry about the past teammates them
for a moment, they soon lapse into the
oblivion of their years. But the taverns,
with their picturesque fronts, the old
smithies, and the toll-gstes, have not
been entirely swept away. Enough has
been left undespoiled to sustain the in
terest and individuality Of the highway,
which from Frederic to Cumberland is
rich by dover of nature, Independently
of its past.-W. III. RIDEING, in HarperS
Magazine for November.