Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 5).djvu/21

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THE OLD TRADING PATH
17

routes, so of this path—the bold Christopher Gist was the first white man of importance to leave reliable record of it. In 1750 he was employed to go westward for the Ohio Company. His outward route, only, is of importance here.[1] On Wednesday, October 31, he departed from Colonel Cresap's near Cumberland, Maryland and proceeded "along an old old Indian Path N 30 E about 11 Miles."[2] This led him along the foot of the Great Warrior Mountain, through the Flintstone district of Allegheny County, Maryland. The path ran onward into Bedford County, Pennsylvania, and through Warrior's Gap to the Juniata River. Here, near the old settlement Bloody Run, now Everett, the path joined the well-worn thoroughfare running westward familiarly known as the "Old Trading Path." Eight miles westward of this junction, near the present site of Bedford, a well-known trail to the Allegheny valley left the Old Trading Path and passed through the Indian Frank's Town and northwest to the French Venango—

  1. Historic Highways of America, vol. vi, ch. 1.
  2. Darlington's Christopher Gist's Journals, p. 32.