Washington's Road (Nemacolin's path) the First Chapter of the Old French War

by Archer Butler Hulbert

Washington’s laborious method of securing necessary information concerning the West, and his earnestness in not omitting any phase of the project are exemplified in a letter to Richard Butler, newly appointed superintendent of Indian affairs, written in 1786: “As I am anxious to learn the nature of the navigation of Beaver Creek, the distance, and what kind of a portage there is between it and Cayahoga, or any other nearer navigable water of Lake Erie, and the nature of the navigation of the latter; and also the navigation of the Muskingum, the distance and sort of portage across to the navigable waters of Cayahoga or Sandusky, and the kind of navigation therein; you would do me an acceptable favor to convey them to me, with the computed distances from the River Ohio by each of these routes to the lake itself.”

In a letter to Henry Lee Washington, again, he writes: “Till you get low down the Ohio, I conceive, that, considering the length of the voyage to New Orleans, the difficulty of the current, and the time necessary to perform it in, it would be the interest of the inhabitants to bring their produce to our ports; and sure I am there is no other tie by which they will long form a link in the chain of federal union.”

Washington’s eagerness to gain every possible item of information concerning methods of internal improvement is displayed in a letter to Thomas Jefferson: “I was very much gratified ... by the receipt of your letter ... for the satisfactory account of the canal of Languedoc. It gives me great pleasure to be made acquainted with the particulars of that stupendous work, though I do not expect to derive any but speculative advantages from it.” To the Marquis of Chastellux he wrote: “I have lately made a tour through the Lakes George and Champlain as far as Crown Point, then returning to Schenectady, I proceeded up the Mohawk River to Fort Schuyler, crossed over the Wood Creek, which empties into the Oneida Lake, and affords the water communication with Ontario. I then traversed the country to the head of the eastern branch of the Susquehannah, and viewed the lake Otsego, and the portage between that lake and the Mohawk River at Canajoharie. Prompted by these actual observations, I could not help taking a more contemplative and extensive view of the vast inland navigation of the United States.... Would to God we may have wisdom enough to improve them! I shall not rest contented until I have explored the western country, and traversed those lines (or a great part of them) which have given bounds to a new empire.”

To William Irvine, Washington wrote in 1788: “The letter with which you favored me ... inclosing a sketch of the waters near the line which separates your State from that of New York, came duly to hand.... The extensive inland navigation with which this country abounds and the easy communications which many of the rivers afford with the amazing territory to the west of us, will certainly be productive of infinite advantage to the Atlantic States.... For my part, I wish sincerely that every door to that country may be set wide open, that the commercial intercourse may be rendered as free and as easy as possible. This, in my judgment, is the best, if not the only cement that can bind those people to us for any length of time; and we shall, I think, be deficient in forethought and wisdom if we neglect the means to effect it.... If the Chautauqua Lake, at the head of Conewango River, approximates Lake Erie as nearly as is laid down in the draft you sent me, it presents a very short portage indeed between the two, and an access to all those above the latter.”

“I need not remark to you, sir,” Washington writes to Harrison, in perhaps the most powerful appeal he ever made, “that the flanks and rear of the United States are possessed by other powers, and formidable ones too; nor how necessary it is to apply the cement of interest to bind all parts of the Union together by indissoluble bonds, especially that part of it which lies immediately west of us, with the Middle States. For what ties, let me ask, should we have upon those people? How entirely unconnected with them shall we be, and what troubles may we not apprehend, if the Spaniards on their right, and Great Britain on their left, instead of throwing stumbling blocks in their way, as they now do, should hold out lures for their trade and alliance? What, when they get strength, which will be sooner than most people conceive (from the immigration of foreigners, who will have no particular predilection towards us, as well as from the removal of our own citizens), will be the consequence of their having formed close connections with both or either of those powers in a commercial way, it needs not, in my opinion, the gift of prophesy to foretell. The Western States (I speak now from my own observation) stand as it were upon a pivot. The touch of a feather would turn them any way. They have looked down the Mississippi until the Spaniards, very impolitically, I think, for themselves, throw difficulties in their way; and they looked that way for no other reason than because they could glide gently down the stream, without considering, perhaps, the difficulties of the voyage back again, and the time necessary to perform it in; and because they have no other means of coming to us but by long land transportations, and unimproved roads. These causes have hitherto checked the industry of the present settlers; for except the demand for provisions, occasioned by the increase of population, and a little flour, which the necessities of the Spaniards compel them to buy, they have no incitements to labor. But smooth the road and make easy the way for them, and then see what an influx of articles will be poured upon us; how amazingly our exports will be increased by them, and how amply we shall be compensated for any trouble and expense we may encounter to effect it.... It wants only a beginning. The western inhabitants would do their part toward the execution. Weak as they are, they would meet us at least half way, rather than be driven into the arms of foreigners, or be dependent upon them.”

The navigation of the Potomac was not easily secured and the Potomac Company relinquished its charter in 1823 when the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company was formed. Yet in only one generation after Washington’s death the important features of his great plan of internal communications were realized. The Chesapeake and Ohio, Erie and Ohio canals made the exact connections desired by Washington half a century before, and with the very results he prophesied. To crown all, within two years of Washington’s death, the great highway across the mountains for which he had pleaded for many years was assured, and for the next half-century the first National Road in the United States fulfilled to the letter Washington’s fondest dream of welding more firmly “the chain of federal union.”

True to his declared conviction, that “the western inhabitants would do their part,” the creation of the first state beyond the Ohio, was responsible for the building of this great road; and, also, true to Washington’s conviction, the commissioners appointed by President Jefferson to determine the best course for the road, decided in favor of Washington’s old roadway from Fort Cumberland through Great Meadows to the Monongahela and the Ohio, the course Washington always held to be the one practical route to the West and which he had had surveyed at his own expense.

For three score years Washington’s and Braddock’s roads answered all the imperative needs of modern travel, though the journey over it, at most seasons, was a rough experience. During the winter the road was practically impassable. Colonel Brodhead, commanding at Fort Pitt during the Revolutionary War, wrote Richard Peters: “The great Depth of Snow upon the Alleghany and Laurel Hills have prevented our getting every kind of Stores, nor do I expect to get any now until the latter End of April.”

But with the growing importance of Pittsburg, the subject of roads received more and more attention. As early as 1769, a warrant was issued for the survey of the Manor of Pittsburg, which embraced 5,766 acres. In this warrant an allowance of six per cent was made for roads.[19] Six years later, or the first year of the Revolutionary War, court met at Pittsburg, and viewers were appointed to report on a large number of roads, in the construction of which all males between the ages of sixteen and forty-five, living within three miles of the road, were required to work under the supervision of the commissioners. One of these roads became, nearly half a century later, incorporated in the Cumberland Road.

The licensing of taverns by Youghiogheny county in 1778, and of ferries about the same time, indicate the opening and use of roads. Within ten years, the post from New York to Pittsburg was established over the treacherous mountain road. In 1794, the Pittsburg post-office was established, with mails from Philadelphia once in two weeks.[20]