Sir: To establish the location of Dunlap’s creek bridge, I desire the field notes of the commissioners, if on file in your office, and Mr. Shriver’s notes of location. From these, I am inclined to believe it will appear that the most favorable route for the bridge was pointed out by the commissioners, and the route over the bridge now used, no part of the National Road, but a county bridge, that we have no right to interfere with. May I request such information as is within your reach on this subject?
The road may be called a very excellent turnpike between this and Frostburg, at the present time; so smooth that already the stage proprietors have commenced the use of a “rough lock,” that materially injures the surface. Some defects are clearly observable, growing out of the constant travel and wear of the center of the road from the prohibition to use barriers to change the travel.
Without being permitted to use barriers of logs, stumps and stones, it is out of our power ever to make a perfect Macadamized road, and far from being as good as the expenditure should produce. Such a system has been resorted to on every road I have seen made, and every officer associated with me concurs in the opinion that we cannot succeed without using them. Permit me to ask a reconsideration of the order prohibiting their use.
Respectfully, your obedient servant,
RICH’D DELAFIELD,
Captain of Engineers.
Brig. Gen. Charles Gratiot,
Chief Engineer.
THE USE OF BARRIERS PERMITTED—A ROAD BEGINNING AT UNIONTOWN, AND ENDING AT WASHINGTON.
Engineer Department,
Washington, May 20, 1834.
Sir: Your communication, dated the 14th instant, was duly received. In conformity with your request, a detail of two officers, as your assistants on the Cumberland Road, has been applied for. Herewith is transmitted a book containing, as stated, “the notes of a location of the United States western road, beginning at Uniontown, and ending at the turnpike near Washington,” which is the only document among the papers transferred from the Treasury Department to this office, relating to the Cumberland Road, embraced in the notes, required to be forwarded to you.
(On the subject of regulating the travel so as to preserve the surface of the road from injury mentioned in your letter, you will again resort to the use of barriers, wood only, to be used for the purpose, and placed only on one side of the road at the same time, provided the object can thus be accomplished, and so elevated as to be very conspicuous, that the travel by night may not be endangered by the barriers.)