National Road marking its 200th birthday
National Library of Congress photo
A view of the National Road, about one and a half miles east of Washington in South Strabane Township, in 1918.
Courtesy of National Library of Congress
A long-ago view of the National Road, one and a half miles west of Brownsville
Krepps Tavern, along Old Route 40 in Centerville
Automaker Henry Ford and Thomas Edison set out on the out-of-fashion National Road with an entourage in 1918 as part of their automobile tours of America’s dusty back roads.
Car tire manufacturer Harvey Firestone also joined the “tour of vagabonds,” which that year marked the 100th anniversary of the nation’s first federally funded interstate, which by then had taken a backseat to train travel.
“It wasn’t much of a road,” said Donna Holdorf, executive director of National Road Heritage Corridor, which promotes tourism on the two-lane road now called Route 40 through Southwestern Pennsylvania.
The popularity of two-week summer camping trips between 1915 and 1924 helped to launch the auto touring era by attracting people in droves from the city to the clean air in the country, Holdorf said.
The road had fallen out of fashion because of the advancement of rail lines in the 1870s, and then it was bypassed in the 1960s by construction of Interstate 70, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
The National Road was a major accomplishment in August 1818 when a corridor about 140 miles long opened between Cumberland, Md., and Wheeling, which was then part of Virginia.
An editorial from The Genius of Liberty in Uniontown, Fayette County, published Aug. 14, 1818, in The Reporter in Washington, referred to the National Road as “truly an honor to the United States.”
It stated the road would earn money for the towns along its route through the circulation of travelers and carriages, as well as lower and stabilize the price of flour.
“Everyone will benefit by having flour at a regular and steady price,” the editorial stated.
By 1818, portions of the road to the east needed to be rebuilt. However, there would have been a “beaten path” to allow stagecoaches and other travelers to reach Wheeling from Cumberland, Md., Holdorf said.
The Genius of Liberty mentioned in the editorial a 12-mile portion that needed to be completed between Brownsville and Uniontown, and it hoped “the liberality of congress will appropriate means to accomplish.”
Monongahela architect and historian Terry Necciai said the Fredericktown mentioned in the editorial is known today as Frederick, and that it was common for the word “town” to be added or deleted from the names of communities in the early 1800s.
He said the early settlers of Washington County were not interested in developing towns in the late 1790s, when the Whiskey Rebellion erupted over a tax on the whiskey farmers produced from grain.
“They wanted their own kingdoms of 400-acre farms,” Necciai said.
Stabilizing the price of flour, which had been difficult and unprofitable to haul over the Allegheny Mountains, was an important issue to the whiskey producers.
It also took great effort to move flour to New Orleans on flatboats, whose crews had to deal with Indian fights along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The farmers also were known to smuggle flour through New Orleans to England. The journey on foot back to Southwestern Pennsylvania could take up to a year to accomplish.
“Thomas Jefferson created the road, which opened up the Route to New Orleans,” Necciai said.
Jefferson’s secretary of the treasury, Albert Gallatin, pushed for the construction of the road out of his belief that the young nation needed to improve its transportation system, especially to the West.
It cost about $13,000 per mile to build the road, according to Friendship Hill, a national historic site in Fayette County, where Gallatin built his country estate overlooking the Monongahela River.
“It may be no coincidence that the course of the National Road is not far from Gallatin’s home in Southwestern Pennsylvania,” the site states on its website.
Members of the Mason-Dixon T’s chapter of the Model T Club International will retrace part of the vagabond tour to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Ford’s travels to the historic Summit Inn in Farmington.
“The registry where they signed in is hanging on the wall,” said club member Bill Ramsey of Bruceton Mills, W.Va.
The tour will attract 27 Model T’s to the Summit Inn Aug. 19 for a two-night stay at the resort along Route 40 near Uniontown.
“It’s historic that they came that way,” Ramsey said. “That was the beginning of what we now call RVs.”
From The Genius of Liberty, Aug. 8, published in the The Reporter in Washington, Pa., Aug. 24, 1818.
It is with pleasure we announce that the stages have commenced running from Fredericktown, Maryland, to Wheeling, in Virginia, following the course of the National road westward of Cumberland. This great road, truly an honour to the United States, will be finished from Cumberland to this place in a few months, and from Brownsville to Wheeling, it is expected, in the course of next summer; leaving only a distance of twelve miles between Union and Brownsville, of this great work unfinished, which it is hoped the liberality of congress will appropriate means to accomplish. The stages are to carry the mail, and make six trips weekly, they will arrive here three times from east, and three times from the west.
In contemplating the advantages which this road must afford us, that which strikes the mind with most force is the direction it will probably give western trade by attracting country merchants to take the road on the way to the eastward. Baltimore, from its topographical situation, must in time command much of the trade formerly engrossed by Philadelphia. It must be the principal depot for the country bordering the Ohio (River). Perhaps the only reason why it has not already rivalled Philadelphia is its want of capital, but experience proves that capital will flow wherever it can make the most profit, and it will not in this case fail to verify the general rule. The towns on this road will feel the advantage of the circulation which the travelling and the carriage of heavy articles will give to money. Brownsville being the first point on the western navigable waters must become a rich an important place, owing to the embarkation which will take place there. The Monongahela (River) is navigable during the greatest part of the spring and summer seasons, in which the trade between the east and west is most lively.
A great benefit resulting to the farmers of the west will be steady prices at which their flour and other produce will sell. The carriage of flour from Union to Cumberland will probably cost one dollar per barrel, and its conveyance down the Potomac to Alexandria will not exceed one dollar 25 cents per barrel, making flour worth six dollars 75 cents as it sells generally at nine dollars in Alexandria: a price at which our industrious yeomanry will grow, as they ought, wealthy and independent. Not only the people of the west but those who reside east of the mountains will find the benefit of having flour at regular and steady prices.