Читать книгу Highways and Highway Transportation - George R. Chatburn - Страница 46

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—The need of better transportation facilities was “borne in” on the people of the eastern part of the country long before the west had been developed. The Indian trail, a single path,—for they always traveled in single file—gave way to the “tote path” over which each year the settler’s surplus crops were transported to market on pack animals. Even if they owned wheeled vehicles the roads were generally so bad they could not be used. However, wheeled vehicles were not many prior to 1800. When Braddock wished to transport his army to western Pennsylvania he called upon the colonies for wagons, but Maryland and Virginia furnished only twenty-five. He appealed to Franklin, who by his influence was able to secure 154 wheeled vehicles[37] from Pennsylvania, probably the best supplied with wagons of all the colonies.

It was the custom for communities to join together after crops were gathered to start a caravan of packers to market.[38] A master driver with one or two assistants could manage a pack-train of a dozen or so horses. “Hides and peltries, ginseng, and bear’s grease” are mentioned as articles to be bartered for salt, iron, nails, pewter plates and dishes, and cloth and articles of clothing, although the latter were usually made at home. The horses traveled in single file each fitted with a natural crotch of wood for a tree. Hobbles and bells were provided that the horses could be turned loose to graze at night. Sometimes packs had to be taken off to be carried over streams or through narrow defiles. Naturally, methods of transportation had much influence on the character of the crops raised. Stock—cows, sheep, and pigs—could be driven to market by the raiser or sold to a drover who acted as a middleman. Farm products were concentrated by being fed to stock or manufactured into something requiring less space. Settlers complained that it required two bushels of grain to get one to market. Whisky and brandy were easily made, served to concentrate the grain and surplus fruit and always had a ready sale. When the government placed an excise tax on it the opposition was so great as to produce an insurrection in Pennsylvania (1794). Had there been good transportation facilities probably there never would have been a “Whisky Rebellion.” Sixteen gallons (two kegs) of whisky worth $1.00 per gallon east of the Alleghanies was a horse load; whereas the same animal would only pack about two bushels of grain worth, perhaps, 80 cents. That packing was a business of considerable importance is shown by a statement in “The History and Topography of Dauphin (and) Cumberland Counties (Pa.)” quoted by Dunbar: “Sixty or seventy years ago five hundred pack horses had been at one time in Carlisle, going thence to Shippenburg, Fort London and further westward.” This was written in 1848.

Naturally so much traffic induced men to make packing a means of livelihood. They became so numerous and strong that when wagons began to take over the business of freighting they considered it an infringement upon their vested rights. But as goods could be transported more easily and cheaply by wagon the old had to make way for the new. Wagon roads and at first two-wheeled then four-wheeled vehicles began to appear. This created a demand for better roads. At first that consisted in merely widening the packtrain trails. But about the beginning of the nineteenth century, Tresaguet in France, and Macadam and Telford, in Great Britain, were building broken-stone roads which greatly changed and augmented the internal commerce and the industry of those countries. The most populous and wealthy of the colonies likewise began to consider the road question. A few military roads, such as Braddock’s, had been constructed; there was a road along the coast of Massachusetts, and some roads and bridges in the interior, there were roads connecting the larger cities as from Boston to New York and from New York to Philadelphia. The cities in order to retain and extend their trade needed highways of commerce.