Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 12).djvu/42

 company had the right to erect bridges, or in case a ferry was in operation, to make the ferryman keep his banks and boats in good condition; that the company make annual reports to the State Board of Public Works; and that the road be forever a public highway.

The roadway was now soon built. Not dependent upon the stock that might be taken in the larger towns, the road made peace with the mountains and was built through the southern part of Preston County in 1832, leaving Kingwood some miles to the north. Evansville was located in 1833, and owes its rise to the great road. The route of the road is through Hampshire, Mineral, Grant, Garrett, Preston, Taylor, Harrison, Doddridge, Ritchie, and Wood Counties, all West Virginia save Garrett which is in Maryland. Important as the route became to the rough, beautiful country which it crossed, it never became of national importance. Being started so late in the century, the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, which was completed to Cumberland in 1845, stopped in large part the busy scenes of the Old Northwestern Turnpike.