I have thought it advisable, also, to secure from obliteration the trace of the road so far as it has been approved, which has been executed at such considerable expense, by opening one-half of its breadth through its whole length.
The report of the commissioners herewith transmitted will give particular information of their proceedings under the act of March 29, 1806, since the date of my message of January 31, 1807, and will enable Congress to adopt such further measures, relative thereto, as they may deem proper under existing circumstances.
TH. JEFFERSON.
February 19, 1808.
The undersigned, commissioners appointed under the law of the United States, entitled “An act to regulate the laying out and making a road from Cumberland, in the State of Maryland, to the State of Ohio,” in addition to the communications heretofore made, beg leave further to report to the President of the United States that, by the delay of the answer of the Legislature of Pennsylvania to the application for permission to pass the road through that State, the commissioners could not proceed to the business of the road in the spring before vegetation had so far advanced as to render the work of exploring and surveying difficult and tedious, from which circumstance it was postponed till the last autumn, when the business was again resumed. That, in obedience to the special instructions given them, the route heretofore reported has been so changed as to pass through Uniontown, and that they have completed the location, gradation and marking of the route from Cumberland to Brownsville, Bridgeport, and the Monongahela river, agreeably to a plat of the courses, distances and grades in which is described the marks and monuments by which the route is designated, and which is herewith exhibited; that by this plat and measurement it will appear (when compared with the road now traveled) there is a saving of four miles of distance between Cumberland and Brownsville on the new route.
In the gradation of the surface of the route (which became necessary) is ascertained the comparative elevation and depression of different points on the route, and taking a point ten feet above the surface of low water in the Potomac river at Cumberland, as the horizon, the most prominent points are found to be elevated as follows, viz.:
The law requiring the commissioners to report those parts of the route as are laid on the old road, as well as those on new grounds, and to state those parts which require the most immediate attention and amelioration, the probable expense of making the same passable in the most difficult parts, and through the whole distance, they have to state that, from the crooked and hilly course of the road now traveled, the new route could not be made to occupy any part of it (except an intersection on Wills mountain, another at Jesse Tomlinson’s, and a third near Big Youghiogheny, embracing not a mile of distance in the whole) without unnecessary sacrifices of distances and expense.