cbustapeck

I haven't paid much attention to the uses of specific structures until recently - I was interested more in the general geography and things that photograph well. A few that come to mind (and I'm sure that there are many more...) are the South Mountain Inn, west of Frederick, Maryland, this Inn, in Flintstone, Maryland, and this place, which clearly requires some major work. There's also the Four Mile House, in Cumberland, and I'm sure many more. One of the more interesting ones is on an old alignment, Exline Road, on the east side of Sideling Hill, a couple miles west of Hancock, Maryland. I can't quite tell whether it's been split up into a triplex or what. I'll post photos later tonight, once I figure out how to fix all the photos that I shot with the white balance on my camera set to "tungsten" - oops. Unlike in, say, Ohio, where many of the National Road motels have remained motels or rental housing, many of the inns in Maryland have become private houses. You notice them mostly because a house seems both too big and too close to the road for the age of the structure - if it were merely the house of a well-off individual, it would be set back further from the road.

I don't know about a favorite, but last weekend, I drove on the National Road from Baltimore to Frostburg, Maryland. It was a beautiful drive, especially the section from Hancock to Frostburg. I wish I could have gone further west, but I just didn't have the time. The historic houses in all the small towns along the way look so perfect in the autumn light. The scenery from Town Hill, one of the most beautiful views in the state, were especially nice - and there were more cars there than I've ever seen. I offer, below, one of my shots from Town Hill, with I-68 and its massive cut through Sideling Hill.

Thank you. Searight's book has been a helpful source. A surprising amount of the old National Road in Maryland is still present - the one major exception being the Monocacy River Jug Bridge - but don't get me started on that. Most of the taverns and buildings are still around, though the landscape has changed a bit as DC sprawl continues to eat up more farmland. The Maryland Historical Trust Historical Sites Survey has been quite helpful - the searching tools and language could use a bit of work - it took me a while to realize that the small stone bridges in Howard County were, in fact, not culverts or bridges but "small structures" - but it has provided a lot of information about buildings on the road. Where I really need historical map information right now is the National Road between Sideling Hill (5 miles or so west of Hancock, MD) and Cumberland - I think that historic USGS topos will probably do the trick. When I-68 was cut through, so much of the road was rerouted and releveled that it is difficult to figure out where the road might have gone or which segments might be original.

Thank you. It does seem like fun so far. I didn't have any idea that there were so many milestones out there, either, which is how I got into this mess. I was driving home to Baltimore from a wedding in Cleveland and had some extra time, so I thought I'd take the old National Road east from Wheeling. I started photographing milestones, and when I got home, worked on adding the appropriate metadata to them like the good librarian that I am. I found that most of the sources said that no more than a third of the milestones were extant. I thought I'd seen about that many on my drive that day and took it as a challenge. You can see the result. The biggest area where I think that more (original) milestones can be found is Pennsylvania. The road has been regraded and leveled a fair amount, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few milestones hiding at the tops of hills, among the brush, ten or fifteen feet above the road bed. - Christopher

Thank you. I'm really surprised that there aren't more people interested in the National Road in this neck of the woods - the route of the road has changed relatively little, the scenery is great, and it is relatively close to Washington and Baltimore. Also, on the bridges theme, I offer my map of stone bridges on the National Road in Maryland, with photographs as well as a photograph of the most famous extant stone bridge on the National Road, the Casselman River Bridge.

I've been working to find and map all the extant National Road milestones. The following are the maps that I've completed so far. I think that the maps are a good way to visualize this information. In the future, I hope to include photographs that better illustrate just where the milestones are. I may also link to more extensive sets of photographs of a given milestone. Maryland - Milestones 1-25 Maryland - Milestones 26-50 Maryland - Milestones 51-75 Maryland - Milestones 76-100 Maryland - Milestones 101-125 Maryland - Milestones 126-150 Maryland - Milestones 151-171 Pennsylvania - Milestones 96 3/4-77 Pennsylvania - Milestones 76-57 Pennsylvania - Milestones 56-37 Pennsylvania - Milestones 36-15 West Virginia - Milestones

Here are a couple of forgotten bridges, from the National Road, in western Maryland. There are a surprising number of small early stone culverts further east, too. The Puzzley (Puzzly) Run Bridge and the Shade Run Bridge