Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 3).djvu/99

Rh Christopher Gist, whom Washington engaged as guide, knew well this "Road of Iron" through the mountain, and perhaps was the first white man to travel it who left record of it. On July 16, 1751, he had been commissioned by the committee of the Ohio Company to visit their grant of land in the West, and, among other things, "to look out & observe the nearest & most convenient Road you can find from the Company's Store at Will's Creek to a Landing at Mohongeyela." The path started from the buildings Hugh Parker had erected for the Ohio Company in 1750 on land purchased from Lord Fairfax. It followed the course outlined to Laurel Hill; here it left what was perhaps the main trail to the Ohio, and bore westward to the Monongahela river which it touched at Redstone Old Fort (Brownsville, Pa.) It was the course of the shortest portage between the Potomac and Monongahela.

It was the main trail to the Ohio over