Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 13).djvu/84

 the new canal as far as possible. A summary of the eastern section reads:

In seeking a route across the towering ridges between the Potomac and heads of the Ohio, the course first suggested by Washington and studied by commissioners since his day was discarded by the board of surveyors which now planned the actual course of the canal. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company being incorporated in Pennsylvania, it was now no object to keep the highway within the territories of Virginia and Maryland alone. Upon exploration, it was found that a route up Wills Creek from the Potomac at Cumberland, Maryland, and across to Casselman's River, a branch of the Youghiogheny, was a more favorable route than that by way of Savage River and Deep Creek to the Youghiogheny. The question was determined by the supply of water at summit level. The reservoirs in the Deep Creek plan would have to be twelve miles in