Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 12).djvu/29

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OLD NORTHWESTERN TURNPIKE
25

Mountain bearing the same name[1] (on the top of which at one Snails I dined) I came to Colo. Abrahm. Hites at Fort pleasant on the South Branch[2] about 35 Miles from Logstons a little before the Suns setting. My intention, when I set out from Logstons, was to take the Road to Rumney [Romney] by one Parkers but learning from my guide (Joseph Logston) when I came to the parting paths at the foot of the Alligany[3] (abt. 12 Miles) that it was very little further to go by Fort pleasant, I resolved to take that Rout . . to get information. . ."

This extract from Washington's journal gives us the most complete information obtainable of a region of country concern-

  1. Knobby Mountain.
  2. Near Moorefield, Hardy County, West Virginia.
  3. Mt. Storm, Grant County. The Old Northwestern Turnpike bears northeast from here to Claysville, Burlington and Romney. Washington's route was southwest along the line of the present road to Moorefield. Evidently the buffalo trace bore southwest on the watershed between Stony River and Abraham's Creek—White's West Virginia Atlas (1873), p. 26. Bradley's Map of United States (1804) shows a road from Morgantown to Romney; also a "Western Fort" at the crossing-place of the Youghiogheny.