build the Erie Canal from Utica to Buffalo using the Mohawk from
Utica to the Hudson.

Historic Cumberland, in Maryland, was chosen by Congress as the
eastern terminus of the great highway which should bind Ohio to
the Old Thirteen. Commissioners were appointed in 1806 to choose
the best route by which the great highway could reach the Ohio
River between Steubenville, Ohio and the mouth of Grave Creek;
but difficulties of navigation in the neighborhood of the Three
Sister Islands near Charlestown, or Wellsburg, West Virginia, led
to the choice of Wheeling, farther down, as a temporary western
terminus.

The route selected was an excellent compromise between the long
standing rival claims of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to
the trade of the West. If Baltimore and Alexandria were to be
better served than Philadelphia, the advantage was slight; and
Pennsylvania gained compensation, ere the State gave the National
Government permission to build the road within its limits, by
dictating that it should pass through Uniontown and Washington.
In this way Pennsylvania obtained, without cost, unrivaled
advantages for a portion of the State which might otherwise have
been long neglected.

The building of the road, however satisfactory in the main, was
not undertaken without arousing many sectional and personal hopes
and prejudices and jealousies, of which the echoes still linger
in local legends today. Land-owners, mine-owners, factory-owners,
innkeepers and countless townsmen and villagers anxiously watched
the course of the road and were bitterly disappointed if the new