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196 ume could be filled with descriptions of the old Pennsylvania Road through Bedford and Ligonier. I believe the fame of the Cumberland Road was due rather to the fact of its being a national enterprise—and the first of its kind on the continent—than to any superiority it achieved over competing routes. The idea of the road was grand and it played a mighty part in the advancement of the West; but, such was the nature of its course, that it does not seem to have been the "popular route" from Washington to Pittsburg, the principal port on the Ohio River.

The Pennsylvania Road was the most important link between New England and the Ohio Valley in the days when New England was sending the bravest of its sons to become the pioneers of the rising empire in the West. True, Venable has written: