after my Best Respts to your Excelancy and famyly I wish to inform you that I have sum intention of undertaking this New Rode that is to be Cut through the Wilderness and I think My Self intiteled to the ofer of the Bisness as I first Marked out that Rode in March 1775 and Never Re'd anything for my trubel and Sepose I am No Statesman I am a Woodsman and think My Self as Capable of Marking and Cutting that Rode as any other man Sir if you think with Me I would thank you to wright mee a Line by the post the first oportuneaty and he Will Lodge it at Mr. John Miler son hinkston fork as I wish to know Where and When it is to be Laat [let] So that I may atend at the time I am Deer Sir your very omble sarvent"[29] Boone probably did not get the contract.[30] In 1797 five hundred pounds were appropriated for the repair of the road and erection of toll-gates. The result of this and all subsequent legislation, to preserve a thoroughfare after its day and reason for existence had passed, is thus summed up by Mr. Allen: "But despite all this--despite all that has been done to civilize it since Boone traced its course in 1790 [1775?], this honored historic thoroughfare remains today as it was in the beginning, with all its sloughs and sands, its mud and holes, and jutting ledges of rock and loose bowlders, and twists and turns, and general total depravity." And yet "it is impossible," Mr. Allen continues, "to come upon this road without pausing, or to write of it without a tribute." The mountainous portions of Boone's old road are the picturesque as well as the historic portions. And come what may, this zig-zag pathway through Powell's Valley and Cumberland Gap can never be effaced--never forgotten. The footsteps of the tens of thousands who have passed over it, exhausted though each pilgrim may have been, have left a trace that a thousand years cannot eradicate. And so long as the print of those weary feet can be seen in dark Powell's Valley, on Cumberland Gap, and beside Yellow and Rockcastle Creeks, so long will there be a memorial left to perpetuate the heroism of the first Kentuckians--and the memory of what the Middle West owes to Virginia and her neighbors. For when all is said this track from tide water through Cumberland Gap must remain a monument to the courage and patriotism of the people of old Virginia and North Carolina.