where franchises for electric railway lines have been granted. In Franklin County, west of Columbus, Ohio, there is hardly room for a standard gauge track outside the roadbed, where once the road occupied forty feet each side of its axis. When the property owners were addressed with respect to the removal of their fences, they demanded to be shown quitclaim deeds for the land, which, it is unnecessary to say, were not forthcoming from the state. Hundreds of contracts, calling for a width of eighty feet, can be given as evidence of the original width of the road.[1] In days when it was considered the most extraordinary good fortune to have the Cumberland Road pass through one's farm, it was not considered necessary to obtain quitclaim deeds for the land.
It is difficult to sufficiently emphasize the aristocracy which existed among the old "pike boys," as those most intimately connected with the road were called. This was particularly true of the drivers of the
- ↑ "The proper limits of the road are hereby defined to be a space of eighty feet in width—forty feet on each side of the center of the graded road-bed."—Law passed April 18, 1870, Laws of Ohio, LVIII, p. 140.
