Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 11).djvu/71

 better grades would have been the result. A remarkable and truthful instance of this (for there cannot, in truth, be many) is the splendid way Braddock's old road sweeps to the top of Laurel Hill by gaining that strategic ridge which divides the heads of certain branches of the Youghiogheny on the one hand and Cheat River on the other near Washington's Rock. The Cumberland Road in the valley gains the same height (Laurel Hill) by a longer and far more difficult route.

The stagecoach heralded the new age of road-building, but these new macadamized roads were few and far between; many roadways were widened and graded by states or counties, but they remained dirt roads; a few plank roads were built. The vast number of roads of better grade were built by one of the host of road and turnpike companies which sprang up in the first half of the nineteenth century. Specific mention of certain of these will be made later.

Confining our view here to general conditions, we now see the Indian trail at its broadest. While the roads, in number,