National Road turns 200 years old this year Sunday, June 18, 2006 By Caitlin Cleary, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06169/699206-85.stm John Beale, Post-Gazette photos Motorists on the original National Pike, Route 40, still pass the Petersburg Toll House in Addison, Somerset County. The nation's first federal highway, the National Road, has been called "the single most significant act in American transportation history," credited with opening up Western lands to trade and settlement and creating a physical, social and economic landscape along the way with its tollgates, taverns and prosperous "pike towns." The National Road, now U.S. Route 40, turns 200 years old this year. Meandering through southwestern Pennsylvania for about 90 miles, it has been celebrated mostly for historical sites such as Fort Necessity National Battlefield, General Braddock's grave and the early stone and brick taverns that served pioneers crossing the Appalachians. The National Road's importance to the new nation was quickly eclipsed, first by railroads, later by interstates. But the road still is relevant to the thousands of people who live there and drive it every day. Their grandparents helped lay its brick. They sledded down its steep hills during snowstorms. It brought them home from the war, and later led their children away in search of work. The National Road has been a place of wild contrasts: quaint churches and X-rated drive-ins, crumbling Main Streets and shiny new malls. In its early years, it was a route taken by runaway slaves as part of the Underground Railroad, and by illicit lovers from neighboring states seeking clandestine marriage in Pennsylvania. Segments of the original pike have been bypassed and forgotten, overgrown with weeds or sunken by long-wall mining. But people still come to the National Road for a lark, exploring the junk shops, farm stands and historic monuments of this slow, scenic route. For others, it is a place to work and spread their message. Just passing through Faith called Tyler Beauchamp and Brandon Gearig to the National Road. The two Mormon missionaries were out one recent afternoon, going from house to house on Route 40 on the outskirts of Washington, Pa., sharing their gospel with anyone who would listen. Both wore black pants, black shoes, a white, short-sleeve Oxford shirt and name tags identifying them as Elders, meaning teachers. Both carried Bibles and the Book of Mormon. They had just come from proselytizing at an apartment complex. "There's politics, and there's religion," said Mr. Gearig, 20, of Battle Creek, Mich. "We're out here talking about one of the most controversial subjects you can think of." Because such missionary work is unpaid, they saved up their own money for this 18-month to two-year assignment. As the two men picked their way along the highway's narrow shoulder in a grassy ditch, trucks roared by, trumpeting exhaust into the air. Working along the highway isn't too bad, they insisted; some of their fellow missionaries are working in foreign countries, dealing with strange bugs and illnesses. "Most people, they'll listen to us," Mr. Gearig said. "Sometimes, we just have to speed-walk a little bit [to catch up with them]." "Yeah, but we still do it, because we know how important it is," said Mr. Beauchamp, 20, of Laramie, Wyo. Border towns Just over the border from West Virginia is West Alexander, once a stagecoach stop on the National Road. The original path of the road goes right through the center of town, which was bypassed by the "new" Route 40 several decades ago. The area was bypassed again with the spitting-distance placement of Interstate 70, the National Road's wider, faster, smoother but much duller sister. These days, West Alexander really gets going when something stops traffic on the interstate, detouring cars through the sleepy village. Still, not a whole lot has changed around here is the consensus at the Liberty Street Cafe, where the sign out front reads, "Sorry, We're OPEN." According to some local historians, West Alexander was a stop for slaves escaping to freedom on the Underground Railroad. The town also was known as a clandestine "marriage mill," given its proximity to state lines and Pennsylvania's lack of marriage laws. From 1825 to 1885, more than 5,000 marriages were performed in West Alexander, pop. 400. From West Alexander, the National Road rolls out past small farms, scrap yards, shuttered filling stations and into the town of Claysville, a typical "pike town" and home to five businesses that are more than 100 years old. Its parking meters are painted red, white and blue and decorated with stars. The hot afternoon sun blazed on Harlan Wright, 78, as he sat on a picnic bench in front of his business, Mrs. M's Amish Bulk Food, and watched the traffic go by. He was soon joined by "Super" Dave Williams, 77, champion pool player and unofficial town historian. John Reichenbecher, 64, pumps gas at his family's Dixie Motel and gas station, 8192 National Pike in Addison, Somerset County. Click photo for larger image. [] "It's a typical little town," said Mr. Wright, who left the area as a young man to be a riverboat captain on the Mississippi. "Movies, restaurants, they had everything in this town; now it's about all gone." The National Road created Claysville; I-70 and the malls in nearby Wheeling, W.Va., and Washington were its undoing, they said. The car dealers left, followed by the shoe shops, the greenhouse, bakery and the dry-goods store. "A lot of young people have left here," Mr. Williams said. "I have six children. You gotta go out of here to find a decent-paying job." According to Mr. Williams, Claysville used to be known as "little Richmond" because most people sympathized with the South during the Civil War. Claysville later became a dry town, by one vote, in 1938. Two taverns were quickly built along the road, just beyond the city limits. "If you wanted to find somebody, you went to either end of town," said Mr. Wright, whose grandfather helped lay the brick for Claysville's piece of the National Road. "If you didn't come down this road, you didn't go nowhere." Into Little Washington From Claysville, the National Road curves past the turquoise waters of Sunset Beach Park, a public pool built in the late 1920s that has been described as a "roadside country club." Children shrieked with delight as a giant mechanical bucket periodically dumped water on them. Several miles east in Washington, travelers come upon the Noce Motel, a squat, eight-unit inn with a '40s-era sign on top of the building that recalls better days. It no longer lights up, said Manager Pam Shrader, but the neon sign out front still works, sort of, reading "NO MOT." "At that time, it was probably like the Ritz," said Mrs. Shrader, who has been working at the Noce for 27 years, "too long," she said, smiling. Her husband does the motel's maintenance. Decades ago, the Noce Motel did a nightly trade, with travelling salesmen and road-tripping families filling up its simple, clean rooms. Nellie Noce, the original owner with husband, Frank, kept the place from becoming a no-tell motel by sniffing out suspected adulterers and summarily tossing them out, Mrs. Shrader said. Lynnea Butler, 13, of Erie, marks where she'll carve with her chainsaw while making a bench at the National Road Chainsaw Carving Festival in Addison, Somerset County. At left is her father, Brent Butler. Click photo for larger image. [] Now the Noce, rock-bottom at $28 a night, rents by the week, filling up with out-of-town loggers working on road projects and people "in transition," making minimum wage at fast-food restaurants, trying to scrape together money for a permanent place to live, she said. Mrs. Shrader has heard many hard-luck stories and learned years ago not to "get into people's business." Tranquility toward Brownsville As the National Road turns southeast to Brownsville, it becomes a quiet country road again. According to one study of the corridor, the road was improved for automobile traffic during the 1920s and incorporated into Route 40 in 1926. In many cases, small villages, clusters of gas stations, diners and other attractions that had sprung up along the original roadway were cut off years later with bypasses. Jim Braun lives on one of them, the Old Pike, Anderson Drive in South Strabane, its few houses bowed and unsettled by long-wall mining. He lives in a house owned by his brother. Next door is a collapsing barn, nearly consumed by vines, where stagecoaches were repaired. "There's nobody but bats in there now," said Mr. Braun, who grew up in nearby Bentleyville. His father was a mine doctor. "Some people come by and take pictures of that [barn] during the wintertime, when you can see it." From here, you can barely hear the traffic speeding by on the main road. Mr. Braun doesn't do much driving anymore. He has been living on disability for the past 10 years, ever since he collided with an old man driving the wrong way on I-70. Twenty-seven pins hold his shattered leg together. Farther east, the National Road goes up and over steep, rolling topography through Scenery Hill, a charming town filled with renovated historic buildings and, true to its name, some of the best scenery around. The windswept Mt. Calvary cemetery, behind the Evangelical Lutheran Church, offers spectacular views. On a clear day, people in Scenery Hill can spot the U.S. Steel Building in Pittsburgh and Downtown fireworks, and the cross at Jumonville, business owner Janice Dunker said. When the National Road enters Brownsville, it disappears for a bit, or at least the signs and markers guiding outsiders along become less obvious. James Bennett lives on Route 40 in Redstone and has vivid memories of the National Road of his youth. One is the Brownsville Drive-In, where he and his friends used to put pieces of cardboard down on the dirt, lie down on them, turn the speakers on and watch the show at the back of the drive-in lot. The drive-in later had a brief X-rated stint, said Mr. Bennett, a retired plumber, mechanic and maintenance worker for the Brownsville School District. During a blizzard in 1952 or 1953, when everything closed, all the neighborhood kids sledded the hill that was the original National Road, "clear to the five-and-dime, right down into town." Since that time, the road has changed a lot, Mr. Bennett said. Crews built a wider, faster Route 40 bypass, and things have gotten more dangerous. "There's been a lot of [people] killed on this highway, a lot of wrecks along this road, right in front of my house," Mr. Bennett said. Even with the promise of the Mon-Fayette Expressway, "I say this highway's still gonna be busy; there's more trucks out here than what's on the turnpike." Into the Highlands Just east of Uniontown, the National Road makes an ear-popping ascent into the mountains. Suddenly, log trucks are humming up and down the highway. Businesses change over from urban to rural: cabins and campgrounds, custom fly-tying and farm stands. The biggest contrasts of the modern-day National Road are up ahead. Not far from Nemacolin Woodlands Resort, with its $1,000-a-night rooms, polo fields, tennis courts and off-road Hummer driving academy, is the Dixie Motel. Established by the Reichenbecher family in 1950, the six-unit motel sits back from the road and 75 feet from the Mason-Dixon Line. Rooms are $18 a night. John Reichenbecher moved here with his family when he was 9 or 10 years old. At one time, there was a diner and a souvenir shop. These days, Mr. Reichenbecher, 64, sells snacks and waits on people coming by for gas. The Dixie Motel does get the occasional hunter or fisherman looking for a cheap, clean room, but things have been pretty slow. "It's not too big a business," Mr. Reichenbecher said. "Business was better before they built [Interstate 68]." He is unsure about the future of the Dixie Motel; his siblings are getting older, starting to retire. "It slows you down as you get older," he said. "I don't really look that far ahead, I guess." Oh, Maryland The last Pennsylvania town on the National Road before it dips south into western Maryland is Addison, pop: 216, where everyone knows everyone else, said Joan Whetsell, president of the Old Petersburg/Addison Historical Society. The Somerset County town is the site of the only remaining original National Road tollhouse in the state; its native-cut stone was saved from demolition decades ago. The town has been trying to emphasize historical tourism with its Pike Days and Chainsaw Carving festivals, front porch tours and events for schoolchildren, she said. "We take a lot of pride in what we have here," she said. Although the town was bypassed in the 1940s by a new alignment of Route 40, Addison still offers travelers B&B lodging and food, just as it did in its earliest days, Mrs. Whetsell said. "After the new road bypassed us, it sort of left us, but we're still going," she said. People from Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; and Pittsburgh are increasingly buying up property in the area for summer homes, Mrs. Whetsell said. To the south, Deep Creek Lake is filling up, and development is inching northward to Addison. "So here we are," she said. "Look how things have changed, but yet, here we are." (Caitlin Cleary can be reached at [email protected] or 412-263-2533. )