sixty-four-foot thoroughfare did not pass immediately through
their property. On the other hand, promoters of toll and turnpike
companies, who had promising schemes and long lists of
shareholders, were far from eager to have their property taken
for a national road. No one believed that, if it proved
successful, it would be the only work of its kind, and everywhere
men looked for the construction of government highways out of the
overflowing wealth of the treasury within the next few years.

In April, 1811, the first contracts were let for building the
first ten miles of the road from its eastern terminus and were
completed in 18191. More contracts were let in 1812, 1813, and
1815. Even in those days of war when the drain on the national
treasury was excessive, over a quarter of a million dollars was
appropriated for the construction of the road. Onward it
crawled, through the beautiful Cumberland gateway of the Potomac,
to Big Savage and Little Savage Mountains, to Little Pine Run
(the first "Western" water), to Red Hill (later called "Shades of
Death" because of the gloomy forest growth), to high-flung Negro
Mountain at an elevation of 2325 feet, and thence on to the
Youghiogheny, historic Great Meadows, Braddock's Grave, Laurel
Hill, Uniontown, and Brownsville, where it crossed the
Monongahela. Thence, on almost a straight line, it sped by way of
Washington to Wheeling. Its average cost was upwards of thirteen
thousand dollars a mile from the Potomac to the Ohio. The road
was used in 1817, and in another year the mail coaches of the
United States were running from Washington to Wheeling, West
Virginia. Within five years one of the five commission houses
doing business at Wheeling is said to have handled over a
thousand wagons carrying freight of nearly two tons each. The