Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 5).djvu/167

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CHAPTER VI

THE MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST

THERE is another hero of Forbes's Road. The rough days of that summer of 1758 were only suggestions of what was to come. Other armies than that of Forbes were to pass this way, for, be it understood at once, Forbes's Road became the great military highway into the West. No single road in America witnessed so many campaigns; no road in America was fortified by such a chain of forts. For a generation this route from Lancaster by Carlisle, Bedford, Ligonier to Pittsburg was the most important thoroughfare to the West.

The French retired from Fort Duquesne, down the Ohio and up the Allegheny. The remainder of the war was fought far away on the St. Lawrence. Hardly a shot was fired in the West after the skirmishes at Fort Ligonier succeeding Grant's defeat.