The Republican., 1925-07-30
By EMILY EMERSON LANTZ.

DN Eh1Ll EhEhSO4N Ian IA.
In the Baltimore Sun of July 12)
Among fateful hours in the history
of Baltimore's early development were
those when the thought of a direct
road to the West was conceived and
the building of the road was carried
into effect.
The Lincoln Highway, 1924 miles
in length, links community with COM
munity, State with State, East with
West, and ocean with ocean. The mo-
torist of today can leave the capital
Of the United States and follow an
uninterrupted route over the finest of
roads until the blue waters of the Pa
cific Ocean dawn upon his sight.
Yet, century ago, the East and
Middle West clasped hands through
the medium of a splendid roadway
constructed by the United States
Government and the commercial and
social life-blood of the nation surged
through the great artery of trade and
travel known as the National Road
or Cumberland Road.
Cumberland Starting Point.
The name Cumberland Road was
applied to it because the official start
ing point, in 1906, of the only wholly
Government-built road in the United
States was Cumberland, Md, a road
some 800 miles in length that carried
all the traffic Of the East to the then
Western frontier and passed through
important cities, towns and villages
on its direct and purposeful way.
The commercial linking of East and
West by a great roadway was a
dream of George Washington.
1t has been written:
washington may well be called the
Father of his Country, yet he was es-
sentially the Father of the West. AS
the youthful envoy to the French in
Ohio, he conceived a dream and a pur-
pose, the dearest, if not the most
dominant of his life-the union COM
mercially, as we'll as politically, of the
East and the West"
Archer Butler Hurlbert, writing in
1901 concerning the old National
Road, said:
$50 patriotic and thoroughly Amer
lean is the Central West today, that it
is difficult to realize by what a slen-
der thread it hung to the fragile re-
public east of the mountains during
the two decades succeeding the Revo-
lutionary War"
And most vital to the commercial
development of Baltimore, as we'll as
to the strength Of the Union, was it's
own turnpike roadway westward from
the heart of the little settlement on
the Patapsco river.
Marking of Roads.
The development of roads was be-
gun in Maryland as early as October
3, 1704. At that date it was Thought
convenient, and very much for the
benefit of the inhabitants of the Prov
ince, that roads and paths be mark
ed" 1t was enacted that public and
main roads be cleared and grubbed
and made fit for travelling for width
Of twenty feet; that roads that led
to any Court House should have two
notches on trees upon both sides of
the road and another notch above the
other two, and that any road leading
40 a church SHOULD be marked into
the entrance of the same, and at the
leaving of any other road, with slip
cut down the face of the tree, near the
ground"
In Baltimore's earliest days an out
let to the West was already in ex-
istence, road that eventually linked
the National Road with this city. It's
direct route was from Baltimore thru
Ellicott City, Cooksville, Lisbon, and
New Market to Frederick, and it be-
came the eastern end of the great
istoric thoroughfare from Atlantic
tidewater to Western Maryland,
Southwestern Pennsylvania and the
Ohio river.
Some Early Trails.
"The old trails across the continent
from the Atlantic to the Pacific" one
authority upon roads writes. " were
stamped out by Natures engineers
the buffalo, the elk and the deer. In
stinct led these animals TO the ridge
road, the direct road, the safest fords
and mountain passes.
'These traces or trails were follow
ed by the Indians and later by the pi-
Oneers who blazed and broadened
them into wagon roads over which
Travelled opportunity, civilization, re-
ligion and romance"
The early trails followed were
Braddock's road, and the Cumberland
road or old National road, running
from Washington, D. c., to Cumber-
land, Nd; the Boone's Lick road from
st. Louis, No, to Old Franklin, Mo-;
the old Santa Fe trail from Old
Franklin, Mo-, to Santa Fe, New
Mexico, and the Grand Canyon route
from Santa Fe to the Pacific Coast.