Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 11).djvu/69

 ragged paths, but they could not draw the heavy wagons. Accordingly hundreds of owners of pack-horses were doomed to see an alarming deterioration in the value of their property when great, fine coach horses were shipped from distant parts to carry the freight and passenger loads of the stagecoach day.

The change in form of American vehicles was small but their numbers increased within a few years prodigiously. Nominally this era must be termed that of the macadamized road, or roads made of layers of broken stone like the Cumberland Road. These roads were wider than any single track of any of the routes they followed, though thirty feet was the average maximum breadth. To a greater degree than would be surmised, the courses of the old roads were followed. It has been said that the Cumberland Road, though paralleling Braddock's Road from Cumberland to Laurel Hill, was not built on its bed more than a mile in the aggregate. After studying the ground I believe this is more or less incorrect; for what we should call Braddock's route was composed of many