Starting from Cumberland the general alignment of Braddock's Road was pursued, until the point was reached where the old thoroughfare left the old portage trail, on the summit of Laurel Hill. The course was then laid straight toward Brownsville (Redstone Old Fort) probably along the general alignment of the old Indian portage path, and an earlier road. From Brownsville to Washington was an old road, possibly the course of the Indian trail. As has already been suggested, there was a dispute concerning the point where the road would touch the Ohio River. The rivalry was most intense between Wheeling and Steubenville. Wheeling won through the influence of Henry Clay, to whom a monument was erected at a later date near the town on the old road. The commissioners rendered a second report on the fifteenth of January, 1808 as follows: "The undersigned, commissioners appointed under the law of the United States, entitled 'An act to regulate the laying out and making a road from Cumberland, in the State of Maryland, to the State of Ohio,' in addition to the communications heretofore made, beg leave further to report to the President of the United States, that, by the delay of the answer of the Legislature of Pennsylvania to the application for permission to pass the road through that state, the commissioners could not proceed to the business of the road in the spring before vegetation had so far advanced as to render the work of exploring and surveying difficult and tedious, from which circumstance it was postponed till the last autumn, when the business was again resumed. That, in obedience to the special instructions given them, the route heretofore reported has been so changed as to pass through Uniontown, and that they have completed the location, gradation, and marking of the route from Cumberland to Brownsville, Bridgeport, and the Monongahela river, agreeably to a plat of the courses, distances and grades in which is described the marks and monuments by which the route is designated, and which is herewith exhibited; that by this plat and measurement it will appear (when compared with the road now traveled) there is a saving of four miles of distance between Cumberland and Brownsville on the new route. "In the gradation of the surface of the route (which became necessary) is ascertained the comparative elevation and depression of different points on the route, and taking a point ten feet above the surface of low water in the Potomac river at Cumberland, as the horizon, the most prominent points are found to be elevated as follows, viz.: Summit of Wills mountain . 1,900.4 1,699.9 1,914.3 Summit Little Savage mountain Branch Pine Run, first Western water Summit of Red Hill (afterwards called shades of death) Summit Little Meadow mountain. 2,026.16 Little Youghiogheny river 1,322.6 1,558.92 . 2,328.12 Summit of Negro mountain, high est points 'Keyser's Ridge. Middle branch of White's creek, at the west foot of Negro mountain White's creek Big Youghiogheny river Summit of ridge between Youghiogheny river and Beaver wa ters. Beaver Run. Summit of Laurel Hill Court House in Uniontown. . 1,360.5 . 1,195.5 645.5 A point ten feet above the surface of low water in the Monongahela river, at the mouth of Dunlap's creek 119.26 "The law requiring the commissioners to report such parts of the route as are laid on the old road, as well as those on new grounds, and to state those parts which require the most immediate attention and amelioration, the probable expense of making the same passable in the most difficult parts, and through the whole distance, they have to state that, from the crooked and hilly course of the road now traveled, the new route could not be made to occupy any part of it (except an intersection on Wills mountain, another at Jesse Tomlinson's, and a third near Big Youghiogheny, embracing not a mile of distance in the whole) without unnecessary sacrifices of distances and expense. "That, therefore, an estimate must be made on the route as passing wholly through new grounds. In doing this the commissioners feel great difficulty, as they cannot, with any degree of precision, estimate the expense of making it merely passable; nor can they allow themselves to suppose that a less breadth than that mentioned in the law was to be taken into the calculation. The rugged deformity of the grounds rendered it impossible to lay a route within the grade limited by law otherwise than by ascending and descending the hills obliquely, by which circumstance a great proportion of the route occupies the sides of the hills, which cannot be safely passed on a road of common breadth, and where it will, in the opinion of the commissioners, be necessary, by digging, to give the proper form of thirty feet, at least in the breadth of the road, to afford suitable security in passing |