sylvania) and the artistic "S" bridge near Claysville, Pennsylvania, will attract the traveler's attention, but many of the less pretentious bridges over brooks and rivulets will, upon examination, be found to be ponderous pieces of workmanship. A pregnant suggestion of the change which has come over the land can be read in certain of these smaller bridges and culverts. When the great road was built the land was covered with forests and many drains were necessary. With the passing of the forests many large bridges, formerly of much importance, are now of a size out of all proportion to the demand for them, and hundreds of little bridges have fallen into disuse, some of them being quite above the general level of the surrounding fields. The ponderous bridge at Big Crossings was finished and dedicated with great éclat July 4, 1818. Near the eastern end of the three fine arches is the following inscription: Kinkead, Beck & Evans, builders, July 4, 1818."

The traveler will notice still the mileposts which mark the great road's successive steps. Those on the eastern portion of the

road are of iron and were made at the foundries at Connellsville and Brownsville. Major James Francis had the contract for making and delivering those between Cumberland and Brownsville. John Snowdan had the contract for those between Brownsville and Wheeling. They were hauled in six-horse teams to their sites. Those between Brownsville and Cumberland have recently been reset and repainted. The milestones west of the Ohio River are mostly of sandstone, and are fast disappearing under the action of the weather. are quite illegible though the word "Cumberland" at the top can yet be read on almost all. In central Ohio, through the Darby woods, or "Darby Cuttings," the mileposts have been greatly mutilated by vandal woodchoppers, who knocked off large chips with which to sharpen their

axes.

Some

The bed of the Cumberland Road was originally eighty feet in width. In Ohio at least, property owners have encroached upon the road until, in some places, ten feet of ground has been included within the fences. This matter has been brought into notice

where franchises for electric railway lines have been granted. In Franklin County, west of Columbus, Ohio, there is hardly room for a standard gauge track outside the roadbed, where once the road occupied forty feet each side of its axis. When the property owners were addressed with respect to the removal of their fences, they demanded to be shown quitclaim deeds for the land, which, it is unnecessary to say, were not forthcoming from the state. Hundreds of contracts, calling for a width of eighty feet, can be given as evidence of the original width of the road. In days when it was considered the most extraordinary good fortune to have the Cumberland Road pass through one's farm, it was not considered necessary to obtain quitclaim deeds for the land.

It is difficult to sufficiently emphasize the aristocracy which existed among the old "pike boys," as those most intimately connected with the road were called. This was particularly true of the drivers of the

14" The proper limits of the road are hereby defined to be a space of eighty feet in width-forty feet on each side of the center of the graded road-bed."— Law passed April 18, 1870, Laws of Ohio, LVIII, p. 140.