But Braddock's Road was for three score years the only route westward through southwestern Pennsylvania, and it grew worse and worse with each year's travel. Indeed, the more northerly route, marked out in part by General Forbes in 1758, was plainly the preferable road for travelers to Pittsburg until the building of the Cumberland Road, 1811-1818. The rapid peopling of the state of Ohio, and the promise of an equal development in Indiana and Illinois caused the building of our first and only great national road. Congress passed an act on the thirtieth of April, 1802, enabling the people of Ohio to form a state government and seek admission into the Union. Section seven contained the following provision: "That one-twentieth of the net proceeds of the lands lying within said State sold by Congress shall be applied to the laying out and making public roads leading from the navigable waters emptying into the Atlantic, to the Ohio, to the said state, and through the same, such roads to be laid out under the authority of Congress, with the consent of the several states through which the roads shall pass."[1] On the third of March, 1803 another act was passed which appropriated three of the five per cent to laying out roads in the state of Ohio, the remaining two per cent to be devoted to building a road from navigable waters leading into the Atlantic Ocean, to the Ohio River contiguous to the state of Ohio. A committee was appointed to review the matter and the conclusion of their report to the Senate on the nineteenth of December, 1805 was as follows: "Therefore the committee have thought it expedient to recommend the laying out and making a road from Cumberland, on the northerly bank of the Potomac, and within the state of Maryland, to the Ohio river, at the most convenient place on the easterly bank of said river, opposite to Steubenville, and the mouth of Grave Creek, which empties into said river, Ohio, a little below Wheeling in Virginia, This route will meet and accommodate roads from Baltimore and the District of Columbia; it will cross the Monongahela at or near Brownsville, sometimes called Redstone, where the advantage of boating can be taken; and from the point where it will probably intersect the river Ohio, there are now roads, or they can easily be made over feasible and proper ground, to and through the principal population of the state of Ohio."[2] Immediately the following act of Congress was passed, authorizing the laying out and making of the Cumberland Road: AN ACT TO REGULATE THE LAYING OUT AND MAKING A ROAD FROM CUMBERLAND, IN THE STATE OF MARYLAND, TO THE STATE OF OHIO