Already the far-sighted Wayne had anticipated the matter of road-building, an important department of a pioneer general's duty in which he particularly excelled. As early as July 10, the American commissioners to the hostile tribes wrote Secretary Knox that the Indian scouts reported that Wayne "has cut and cleared a road, straight from fort Washington, into the Indian country, in a direction that would have missed fort Jefferson; but that, meeting with a large swamp, it was, of necessity, turned to that fort, and then continued six miles beyond it."[148] The very fact that when Wayne left Fort Washington, October 7, he covered the seventy-five odd miles to the site of Fort Greenville (Greenville, Ohio) in six days is proof enough that the Indians' spies were well within the mark in saying that a road had been built; more than that, packhorses had been wearing it deep into the ground with heavy loads of food for mouths and guns, and large droves of cattle had already rough-stamped Wayne's Trace from the Ohio to the Stillwater. Faithful James O'Hara was quartermaster and Elliott and Williams the contractors. Colonel Robert Elliott, a native of Hagerstown, Pennsylvania, met his death at the hands of the savages at the "bigg hill" near Fort Jefferson while engaged in hurrying on provisions to the northern posts. "Mr Elliott had on a wig," records General Posey in a strain of gloomy defiance, "the indians will not get his skulp." Mad Anthony Street, in Cincinnati, is the beginning of Wayne's Road northward up Mill Creek Valley, thence running northwest to Fort Hamilton on the watershed south of the head branches of the West Fork. The route through Hamilton is given by Everts as across the sites of Snider's paper-mill, Niles tool works, and Cape and Maxwell's plant.[149] The old track crossed the Miami a few rods south of the eastern end of the High Street bridge and from there circled around the west end of what is locally known as the "Devil's Backbone" on what was L. D. Campbell's peninsula but which is now an island. Wayne's first camp was at Five Mile Spring, southeast of the village of Five Mile. The old route passed over the present site of that village and kept on the eastern side of Seven Mile Creek all the way to Fort St. Clair (Eaton, Preble County). Two Mile, Four Mile, Seven Mile, and Nine Mile Creeks were all so named from Wayne's crossing-places. Following up the valley of Seven Mile about two miles, the old track leaves it near Nine Mile Creek and turns due north, leaving Butler County in Wayne Township, section 6. In Preble County the "south end" of Wayne's Trace has always been used as a highway and known as "Wayne's Trace Road." The trace passes through Washington Township east of Eaton, crossing the Greenville Road on a bluff near a sycamore-tree on the east side of the road. It crossed Banta's Fork at or near the "Forty-foot Pitch" and ascended the high bank at a point on the east side of the present road.