Page:A Guide to the Preparation of County Road Histories.pdf/27

 acting upon them often have to be taken into account as the tide of settlement rolled westward across and through the Valley and into the present states of West Virginia and Kentucky. This settlement probably began to make itself felt more in the years following the Revolution when legislative enactments of specific road-related nature began to occur rather frequently. Sometimes a researcher working backward from a late eighteenth or early nineteenth century piece of turnpike or bridge legislation will be able to attach new significance to certain road orders issued by the county court or that of an adjacent county, and will find that all of these precursors of the turnpike or bridge related to the developing transportation needs of some distant county or area of Virginia or West Virginia, or perhaps even Kentucky. Often, with the benefit of a knowledge of later events, what at first appeared a rather cryptic road order will take on new meaning, sometimes explicitly stating what was only imperfectly understood before by the researcher. Many cases of this sort should come to light as the records of the Board of Public Works 1816-1902 are examined by individuals working on turnpike and road studies. – 21 –