Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1891-01-10
WASHINGTON AND FREDERICK CITY
PIKE.
A Great Need to Be Supplied.


It seems that during General Jackson's ad-
ministration Congress passed an act to build q
turnpike road from Washington city to Fred
erick, Nd, some forty to fifty miles, as the
natural and national conclusion of the ma
tional road executed between Cumberland,
Md, and Wheeling, at the sole expense of the
government, at cost Of $1,700.000.
While the National road was being made the
rich city Of Baltimore and the more fertile
parts Of Maryland toward Frederick, Hagers-
town and Martinsburg built toll turnpike,
drawing off nearly the whole trade of the
National road and charging such excessive
tolls that roads like the Northwestern Virginia
turnpike were subsequently built.
Gath, =" in one of his letters, has extracted
these passages from the diary of John Quincy
Adams:
December, 1s25.-''Mr. Bailey spoke to me
OF several resolutions which he has Of
fered in Congress on the subject Of roads
and canals. and an amendment Of the
Constitution. told him that the discussion of
his resolutions might be useful, but must in
candor say that my opinions did not concur
with them. l thought the power of making
| roads and canals given by the Constitution and
that an amendment asking the grant of that
ticable and useless. Adams also enters the foi-
lowing in june, 1880: .'rhe President (Jackson)
approved only one of the four bills of internal
improvement lately passed. The approximation
for the road from Washington CITY to Frederick
he returned to the Senate with his objections.
and the subsequent vote was % for and Is
against it. He defeated the appropriation for
the extension of the Cumberland road"
Jefferson, however, in 1908 proposed to Con-
gress to carry the Cumberland road to st. Louis,
and the great military road from Nashville to
New Orleans was superintendent by Gen. Jack
son himself while under construction.
Sixty years have elapsed since the veto of the
bill for a pike road between Washington city and
Frederick city, distance Of hardly fifty miles.
No road to this day leads from Washington to
the region Of turnpikes, Of which Frederick is
q center. -
Into that place come roads reversible all the
year from Baltimore, Gettysburg, Antietam,
Hagerstown-haf a dozen pixies at least-and
one road leads to Urbana, within forty miles Of
Washington.
What might not the intervening region have
become by sixty years employment of one
good pike road, which would have cost but
$75,O60?
And it looks as far of as ever that the local
means and spirit Of intermediate Maryland win
achieve such road while during the civil war
millions OF public property were engulfed in
the sticky clay district between Warrington
and Frederick, where one good road would
have saved cannons, horses, wagons and SUD-
| plies and the frightful marches Of the Army Of
the Potomac to Antietam and Gettysburg.
To execute this work would be q fitting con-
clusi0n Of the period which has seen the re-
habiitation of Washington. We have now
everything ct this capital but carriage commu-
nication with some adjacent road blessed coun-
| try. good road toward the mountains would
beget good inns and in spring or winter throw
| the outer world open to our conveyances.