Starting from Cumberland the general alignment of Braddock's Road was pursued, until the point was reached where the old thoroughfare left the old portage trail, on the summit of Laurel Hill. The course was then laid straight toward Brownsville (Redstone Old Fort) probably along the general alignment of the old Indian portage path, and an earlier road. From Brownsville to Washington was an old road, possibly the course of the Indian trail. As has already been suggested, there was a dispute concerning the point where the road would touch the Ohio River. The rivalry was most intense between Wheeling and Steubenville. Wheeling won through the influence of Henry Clay, to whom a monument was erected at a later date near the town on the old road. The commissioners rendered a second report on the fifteenth of January, 1808 as follows: "The undersigned, commissioners appointed under the law of the United States, entitled 'An act to regulate the laying out and making a road from Cumberland, in the State of Maryland, to the State of Ohio,' in addition to the communications heretofore made, beg leave further to report to the President of the United States, that, by the delay of the answer of the Legislature of Pennsylvania to the application for permission to pass the road through that state, the commissioners could not proceed to the business of the road in the spring before vegetation had so far advanced as to render the work of exploring and surveying difficult and tedious, from which circumstance it was postponed till the last autumn, when the business was again resumed. That, in obedience to the special instructions given them, the route heretofore reported has been so changed as to pass through Uniontown, and that they have completed the location, gradation, and marking of the route from Cumberland to Brownsville, Bridgeport, and the Monongahela river, agreeably to a plat of the courses, distances and grades in which is described the marks and monuments by which the route is designated, and which is herewith exhibited; that by this plat and measurement it will appear (when compared with the road now traveled) there is a saving of four miles of distance between Cumberland and Brownsville on the new route. "In the gradation of the surface of the route (which became necessary) is ascertained the comparative elevation and depression of different points on the route, and taking a point ten feet above the surface of low water in the Potomac river at Cumberland, as the horizon, the most prominent points are found to be elevated as follows, viz.: