Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/200

196 turns due north, leaving Butler County in Wayne Township, section 6. In Preble County the "south end" of Wayne's Trace has always been used as a highway and known as "Wayne's Trace Road." The trace passes through Washington Township east of Eaton, crossing the Greenville Road on a bluff near a sycamore-tree on the east side of the road. It crossed Banta's Fork at or near the "Forty-foot Pitch" and ascended the high bank at a point on the east side of the present road. The swamp which the Indian spies said had turned Wayne's route nearer Fort Jefferson than was originally intended evidently lay in the vicinity of Ithaca, Twin Township, Darke County. The first settler in Brown Township, John Woodington, made his clearing beside Wayne's Trace on the farm owned by William Herdman in section 28 on the Greenville Pike. Through these parts the explorer will find the famous old track partially marked out by the growths of young sycamores which sprang up here when the forests were cut down. Many of the first settlers "saw on the uncovered roots of trees, along the trace, the indisputable