The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-01-23

must have been desperaleiy Hai u road to travel at it's worst 1t was ht- tie less than a trough. The great
 depth of snow," wrote one of the com
 manders at Fort Pitt in the ReVolu-
 tionary war, 'upon the Alleghany ana
 Laurel hills has prevented our gettlng
 every kind of stores, nor do expect to
 get any now until the end Of Aprll'
 Yet the post from New York to Pltts-
 burg was established in lfS6, ana III
 l794 the Pittsburg post-oce was estap-
 lished with mails from Philadelphla
 every two weeks, but by way or
 Forbes road, through Carlisle and Bed-
 ford. The freight rates over the noun
 tains give a plain hint of the diilcul-
 ties of the rough jaurney one liniln-
 grant paid $5.33 per hundredWelght TOT
 hauling women and goods rom All
 eXandria, a., to- the MononSaneIa'
 Six dollars per hundredWeight was
 charged another immigrant for hauling
 freight from Hagerstown, Md, to Ter
 re Haute. Ind.
 You cannot find 6 road mile wide
 nowadays, but many of the pioneer
 roads were that wide. It was pretefa-
 ble to have them mile wide rathef
 than a mile deep, which would nave
 been the case, perhaps, had all the heavy wagons followed one single track.
 Braddock's road, hemmed in now and
 then by the mountain ridges, was not
 as wide as one or two others that might
 be named, but when it was narrow there is reason to believe 1t held the record for depth. In the picture or
 "Braddock's Grave and Road" the cut made in the hillside by the travel Of the pioneer hosts is still plainly visible, in spite of t,.e continuous action of the el- ements, which tends to level off the sur face of the earth. What gorge the road must have been in the early days can easily be imagined At many points along the route, it is plain that no less than dozen courses must have been in use, a new passageway being used as soon as the old became too heavy. It is said that teamsters on Braddock's road always went in twos and threes, for then each could help the other up the hills and through the low places.
 How much work was put on this first road to Pittsburg it is impossible to de- termine. That some work was put on it is proved by the fact that the remains of General Braddock were found while workmen were repairing the roadbed early in the last century. Braddock was mortally wounded on the present site of the city that bears hisname. He died three days afterWard on the jour- ney homeward. His body was buried in the center of the road, so that the passage of the army over the grave would hide it from the Indians. The remains discovered by the workmen were collected in part and buried in the grave now marked by the somber fir trees. It is strange that an officer in the famous foot guards, the pride of the British army could have been neglect ed and forgotten as was the bulldok Braddock.
 But the first road across the noun tains will ever bear his name and be his monument-and nothing could be better proof of his pluck and iron will. And yet not his monument alone There were men with Braddock whose reputa- ton increased, while their leader lost all of his. Braddocks road was a na- ITdlflIIlS roes of the Revolutionary struggle. Tn his road Washington took his most so- per lessons in the desperate game of war and but for these lessons in Penn sylvania he would never have conn., manded the continental armies. Here Baldwin, the immortal hero of De- troit, was trained by bitter defeat to know the price and the secret of suc- cess. Here in Braddosks road Gates, the future conqueror of Saratoga-the victory of the Revolution learned wars lessons. Here Andrew wewis who fought and won the anly great battle in Dunmore's war, took his Here the brave Mercer, who aid down his life at Princeton, learned now to fight for his country. Thus of road was not first the di- 'ect pathway to victory, it kas a train ng school for many brave men whose inal success purchased the indepen- lence of America.
 To those who care for the past it will | ,e interesting some time to find this old | rack of early armies and pioneers and | walk upon it. It can be found upon in- tuiry, almost anywhere east of Laurel | ill. The old national road east of Un- ontoWn is always very near Braddock's oad.
 On the farm of Louis FaZenbaker in 5reat Meadows a half-century's culti- 'ation of the hillside with the blow has lot succeeded in removing rough signs f the old roadway. This plain finger mark of the god of war can be seen half
 mile away, though every year the and has been plowed under. In the forests the track will re- nain plain for many generations to Dispatch.