Page:America's Highways 1776–1976.djvu/9

 The Wilderness Road.

The young Nation that emerged from the War of Independence had a weak government and a primitive transportation system. The rivers and the sheltered coastal waters, such as Long Island Sound, Chesapeake Bay and Albemarle Sound, were the principal highways for travel and commerce. Extending back from these arteries were roads in various stages of development. A very few of these, near the largest cities, were “artificial roads,” ditched and sometimes hard-surfaced with gravel or with “pounded stone.” The rest were improved only to the extent of removing stumps and boulders and leveling the worst irregularities of the ground. Many of these roads were impassable for wheeled vehicles in winter or during the spring thaw. Travelers crossed small streams by fording and the larger ones by ferries. Bridges were few and far between.

On the fringes of settlement, the “roads” were really only horsepaths, unsuitable for wheeled vehicles. The Wilderness Road through Cumberland Gap, located by Daniel Boone in 1775, was such a pack trail.

General Braddock’s military road, constructed in 1755, was chopped out to a width of 12 feet-wide enough to pass the train of 150 Conestoga wagons in a single file—but by 1758 it had reverted to a trace through the forest. The other main transmountain road, the Pennsylvania Road, had been widened in 1758 during the French and Indian War to pass General John Forbes’ wagon trains, but was otherwise unimproved.

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