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58 early days when the Old Trading Path was the main western highway, and in after days when the path became Forbes's Road. From here the pack-horse trains started westward into the mountains loaded—two hundred pounds to a horse—with goods which had come this far in wagons from Lancaster and Philadelphia. The site of Fort Loudoun therefore marks the western extremity of the early colonial roadways and the eastern extremity of the "packers' paths" or trading paths which offered, until 1758, the only route across the mountains. Fort Loudoun was built late in 1755, after considerable debate as to its location. Colonel Armstrong, after examining a spot near one Barr's, finally determined to locate it "on a place in that neighborhood, near to Parnell's Knob, where one Patton lives as it is near the new road; it will make the distance fomfrom [sic] Shippensburg to Fort Lyttleton two miles further than by McDowell's."

Ten miles southwest of Shippensburg,