Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1918-04-28

-7HE road to Swink's mill follows
the course of SCOTS run.
There are so many strangers
q in Washington and so many
homefolk who lack the faculty of get
ting away from a trolley line or an
automobile road that the Rambler be-
Iieves 1t may be profitable use of the
SPACE allotted to him to introduce
swinks mill road and. SCOTS run to
new and old Washingtonians.
Five miles west of Chain bridge the
Georgetown and Leesburg pike slants
steeply down the east slope OF mar
row valley and laboriously climbs the
west slope. continuing its rutty. rocky
way to that part of Virginia where
the sun goes to sleep behind the
Catoctin mountains. The pike is not
now a rocky way throughout its whole
course for from Chain bridge to Lang
lev and from about Dranesville to Lees
burg money. machinery and men have
Transformed this stone-paved road over
which four-horse stages used to creak
and rumble between Georgetown anu
the far west-that Is, as far west as
the Catoctins or the Blue Ridge and the
Shenandoah valley. Sometimes these
numbering stages went as far into the
American WIGS as the AIesHeHy Iiouh-
tains were a century ago. But the
part of the old pike which the Rambler
is writing about has not been made over
and automobilists who drive their cars
along this olden way do not generaLy
heap caresses on it. Quite the contrary.
IT is still paved" with rough and Jag
ged rocks of considerable size ana
great irregularfty. The frosts ana rains
Of hundred seasons have upheaved
some sections of this pavement and de-
pressed others.
Turnpike companies in this part of
the world did not often prove to be
gold mines or coal mines to their stock
holders. and often there was very lit
tie money with which to make repairs.
That was probably the case with the
company which operated this road
Then, the civil war came along and
the people of Virginia as well as the
Union forces occupying parts Of the
state had other problems to think about
than good roads. Armies marched over
these ancient pixies near washington
and they paid no toll. Artillery trains
and commissary trains passed to and
fro in long professions. Ruts and holes
developed in the roads and deepened
and expanded as time went on. me.
rock-paved way of the Georgetown and
Leesburg pike became 80 bad that traf-
ffc turned aside and took to the clay.
first on one side of the rock-bedded
roadway and then on the other. The
result of this side-stepping was to
wear roads in many places ten feet be-
low the grade of the stony pike. These
side roads often look like gullies. Their
banks are SO steep that they some
times slip and the wagonway is SO
narrow that two teams cannot pass
each other. These side roads make
sticky going in wet weather.
The valley which the pike crosses five
miles west of Chain bridge Is one that
has been worn by SCOTS run. The run
has been securing that valley ever
since the. branch got the name of
SCOTS run, which must have been
about two hundred years ago. It was
securing the valley during all the CEN
turtles that Indians lived along the Po-
tomac, and no doubt those Indians gave
TO SCOTS run a name that has not been
preserved. No doubt, for tens of thou