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 uninhabited region, and which remains such today. Yet it was inevitable that a way should be hewn here through Virginia to the Ohio; the call from the West, the hosts of pioneers, the need of a state way of communication, all these and more, made it sure that a Virginia Turnpike should cross the mountains.

Before that day arrived the Cumberland Road was proposed, built, and completed, not only to the Ohio River, but almost to the western boundary of the state of Ohio; its famous successor of another generation, the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, was undertaken in 1825. These movements stirred northern Virginians to action and on the twenty-seventh of February, 1827, the General Assembly passed an act "to incorporate the North-western Road Company."

Sections 1, 3, 4, and 5 of this Act are as follows:

"1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia, That books shall be opened at the town of Winchester, in Frederick county, under the direction of Josiah Lockhart, William Wood, George S. Lane, Abraham Miller, and Charles Brent, or any