The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1906-05-31
A PIKE FROM COAST TO COAST
The Cumberland Road and Santa Fe
Trail May Be Restored.
From the Kansas City star

,
roads i'll America will be a nation
al issue is apparent from the dis
cussion Of the subject, which is
growing louder each day in all
parts of the United States. CITIES
are looking carefully to their
street-paving, counties and States
are talking more about their roads,
and now the subject of a national
highway has reached Congress.
The creation of the American
Appian Way beginning at Wash
ingtOn, on Atlantic tidewater, fol-
lowing the trail of the historic ma
tional pike through the passes of
the Appalachians and across the
Ohio through the great Middle
West to St. Louis, and then in
two great boulvards on to the Pa
CifC, one Of which will cross Mon
tana to Puget sound and the other
over the Santa Fe trail to San
Francisco, will be the magnificent
fruition ofplans, the first tentative
steps of which have been taken in
the introduction of a bill in Con-
gress by Representative Pearre of
Maryland for all appropriation for
the restoration of the monuments
and landmarks and the reconstruc-
ton of the ancient Cumberland
road that by its building made an
empire possible.
Pledged to the support of this
bill are the rapidly growing auto.
mobile associations of the country,
and the strong good roads organi-
cations, which are fast increasing
in membership, are giving hearty
cooperation to the project.
But the building of a great cen
trail highway, stretching from the
Atlantic to the Pacific through the
heart of the Republic, is but one
feature Of the transformation that
IS pending i'll the revolution of
American roads. The plans Of the
great automobile associations pro-
pose propaganda that will lead
to the reconstruction of practically
all of the old highways which pre-
vious to the advent of the railroad
were the nations arteries of traffic.
At the birth of the Republic,
when the battle of Lexington was
fought, the inspiring news sped
South over the old colonial high
way which, like a great white
nerve, stretched from Boston along
the Atlantic coastal plain to far
away Savannah, in the glades of
Georgia. In the North part of
this ancient highway has been re-
built in sections of New England,
New York, New Jersey and Penn
sylvania.
At its last session just adjourned
the Maryland Legislature made an
appropriation for the reconstruc-
ton as a boulvard of the road be
tween Baltimore and Washington,
and at a recent convention of the
Southern automobile associations
the rebuilding of the old pike from
Washington south to Jacksonville
took tangible shape.
Save to the historian and those
who live along the dnsty thread of.
macadam that binds together
Washington and St. Louis, the
story of the old national pike is an
unknown chapter to the present
generation; yet the favor Of TO
nance, the memory Of almost for
gotten glories, of a noble, am
bilious mission successfully ac-
complished clings to every hoary
monument Of that ancient high
way.
And the word ancient" is used
advisedly, for the route is prehis-
toric, Centuries before the dar-
ing ships of Raleigh or Smith
touched the coast of the New
World, long before the Indians
had invaded America over van
ished land bridge at Bering straits,
ages before the mound-buildet
had left their yet undeciphered
messages, countless herds of bison
foamed the continent. In their
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