tisfactory in the main, was not
undertaken without arousing many sectional and personal hopes and
prejudices and jealousies, of which the echoes still linger in local
legends today. Land-owners, mine-owners, factory-owners, innkeepers and
countless townsmen and villagers anxiously watched the course of
the road and were bitterly disappointed if the new sixty-four-foot
thoroughfare did not pass immediately through their property. On the
other hand, promoters of toll and turnpike companies, who had promising
schemes and long lists of shareholders, were far from eager to have
their property taken for a national road. No one believed that, if it
proved successful, it would be the only work of its kind, and everywhere
men looked for the construction of government highways out of the
overflowing wealth of the treasury within the next few years.

In April, 1811, the first contracts were let for building the first ten
miles of the road from its eastern terminus and were completed in 18191.
More contracts were let in 1812, 1813, and 1815. Even in those days
of war when the drain on the national treasury was excessive, over a
quarter of a million dollars was appropriated for the construction of
the road. Onward it crawled, through the beautiful Cumberland gateway of
the Potomac, to Big Savage and Little Savage Mountains, to Little Pine
Run (the first "Western" water), to Red Hill (later called "Shades
of Death" because of the gloomy forest growth), to high-flung
Negro Mountain at an elevation of 2325 feet, and thence on to the
Youghiogheny, historic Great Meadows, Braddock's Grave, Laurel Hill,
Uniontown, and Brownsville, where it crossed the Monongahela. Thence,
on almost a straight line, it sped by way of Washington to Wheeling. Its
average cost was upwards of thirteen thousand dollars a mile from the
Potomac to the Ohio. The road was used in 1817, and in another year
the mail coaches of the United States were running from Washington to
Wheeling, West Virginia. Within five years one of the five commission
houses doing business at Wheeling is said to have handled over a
thousand wagons carrying freight of nearly two tons each. The Cumberland
Road at once leaped into a position of leadership, both in volume of
commerce and in popularity, and held its own for two famous decades. The
pulse of the nation beat to the steady throb of trade along its highway.
Maryland at once stretched out her eager arms, along stone roads,
through Fre