These roads were the Dumfries and Falmouth Roads via Ashby’s Gap, the Colchester Road via Williams’ Gap, and the Alexandria Road via Vestal’s Gap. Their origins and early history are given in Harrison, Landmarks, pp. 466-484.
Davis, Intellectual Life, p. 152, and A. Hulbert, The Paths of Inland Commerce (New Haven: Yale University, 1921), pp. 44-55. The situation appeared to improve little during the nineteenth century, for in 1894 the Virginia Good Roads Convention called the American rural roads “far below the average” and “certainly are among the worst in the civilized world and always have been largely as a result of permitting local circumstances to determine the location with little or no regard for any general system, and haste and waste and ignorance in building.” Virginia Good Roads Convention, Programme (Richmond: Stone Printing Co., 1894), p. 24.
The act incorporating the Fairfax and Loudoun Turnpike Road Company authorized construction and operation of an “artificial road from Alexandria to the Little River.” Laws, 1795, c. 31 (December 26, 1795). Shepherd’s Statutes (Richmond: Shepherd, 1836), I, p. 378. The successor company, known as the Little River Turnpike Company, was incorporated by legislation enacted in 1802 and 1803. Laws, 1801, c. 83 (January 28, 1802) and Laws, 1802, c. 52 (January 19, 1803), Shepherd’s Statutes, II, p. 383, 452. The extension into Fauquier County was authorized by the incorporation of the Fauquier and Alexandria Turnpike Company, designed to build “an artificial turnpike road from Fauquier Court House to Buckland farm, or Buckland town, and thence to the Little River Turnpike road, at the most suitable point for affording a convenient way from Fauquier Court House to Alexandria.” Laws, 1807, c. 27 (January 27, 1808), Shepherd’s Statutes, III, p. 379.
Alexandria Gazette, May 23, 1809. The extension was built by the Fauquier and Alexandria Turnpike Road Company, and was constructed from the Little River Turnpike at Fairfax Courthouse, through Centreville and Buckland, to Fauquier County Courthouse (Warrenton).