Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 3).djvu/210

206 these roads became, nearly half a century later, incorporated in the Cumberland Road.

The licensing of taverns by Youghiogheny county in 1778, and of ferries about the same time, indicate the opening and use of roads. Within ten years, the post from New York to Pittsburg was established over the treacherous mountain road. In 1794, the Pittsburg post-office was established, with mails from Philadelphia once in two weeks.

Through all these years a stream of pioneers had been flowing westward, the current dividing at Fort Cumberland. Hundreds had wended their tedious way over Braddock's Road to the Youghiogheny and passed down by water to Kentucky, but thousands had journeyed south over Boone's Wilderness Road, which had been blazed through Cumberland Gap in 1775. All that was needed to turn the whole current toward the Ohio was a good thoroughfare.

The thousands of people who had gone, by one way or another, into the trans-Ohio