Our most recent trip took us to fully 25% of the nation’s commonwealths, to celebrate a famed example of a distinction without a difference.
It wasn’t quite full spring in Pennsylvania last month, but warm enough most of time.
We drove the National Road (U.S. 40) in Pennsylvania, from where it crosses the border near Wheeling, through to Uniontown, and later drove the segment that goes into Maryland.
Didn’t quite make it to the eastern terminus, in Cumberland, Maryland. Once upon a time, maybe a small detour during a late ’90s return from Dallas, we saw the western terminus in Vandalia, Illinois.
One minor landmark along the way.
Searight’s Tollhouse, built in 1835 by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to collect tolls, since the federal government had turned the road over to its various states that year. The structure, near Uniontown, is one of two surviving tollhouses, out of the six built. No tolls have been collected there since the 1870s.
The structure was built near the tavern of William Searight, the state commissioner in charge of the roadway, per Wiki.
Barman and toll collector. There’s an idea for a Western revival limited series on streaming: Will Searight, Frontier Toll Collector. I’m thinking a comedy, in the same Shakespearean writing style as Deadwood, but no one gets killed.
A church on the National Road, east of Uniontown: Mount Washington Presbyterian, founded in 1842.
The church cemetery provides a view of the National Road.
In Uniontown itself, I stopped by briefly at Oak Grove Cemetery, originally the Union Cemetery of Fayette County, which has been accepting permanent residents since 1867.
Famed permanent residents? I checked with Find-A-Grave (just now), and the pickings are slim: mostly forgotten members of the U.S. Congress, though there is a Civil War officer, Silas Milton Bailey (d. 1900). I just made his acquaintance. Quite a story. Uniontown jeweler in civilian life; solider that didn’t let getting shot in the face keep him from action for long.
Fort Necessity is just off U.S. 40 and thus the National Road. Something I noticed there, featured on a park service educational sign. Of course. How could they not be involved?
The camp, Pennsylvania SP-12, existed from 1935 to ’37, with about 800 men, planting trees and laying out trails and roads. This is the first time I’ve seen the CCC seal depicted at any of its sites, though of course the men sometimes rate bronze recognition. There is evidence that the seal dates back to the active period of the corps.
Just as we left Pennsylvania for the last time, I was able to stop at the border with Maryland on U.S. 219, just south of Salisbury, Pa. Not just any border, but the Mason-Dixon Line. It’s one thing to cross it, as I have who knows how often. It’s another thing, according to my eccentric lights, to stand on it.
Yuriko had never heard of it. I explained a little about its history and its wider but not quite literal meaning as a line between free and slave, North and South, but she didn’t find it all that impressive.