In both tavern and wagonhouse the fireplace and the bar were always present, whatever else might be missing. The fireplaces in the first western taverns were notably generous, as the rigorous winters of the Alleghenies required. Many of these fireplaces were seven feet in length and nearly as high, capable of holding, had it been necessary, a wagonload of wood. With a great fireplace at the end of the room, lighting up its darkest corners as no candle could, the taverns along the Cumberland Road where the stages stopped for the night, saw merrier scenes than any of their modern counterparts witness. And over all their merry gatherings the flames from the great fires threw a softened light, in which those who remember them best seem to bask as they tell us of them. The taverns near some of the larger villages, Wheeling, Washington, or Uniontown, often entertained for a winter's evening, a sleighing party from town, to whom the great room and its fireplace were surrendered for the nonce, where soon lisping footsteps and the soft swirl of old-fashioned skirts told that the dance was on. Beside the old fireplace hung two important articles, the flip-iron and the poker. The poker used in the old road taverns was of a size commensurate with the fireplace, often being seven or eight feet long. Each landlord was Keeper-of-the-Poker in his own tavern, and many were particular that none but themselves should touch the great fire, which was one of the main features of their hospitality, after the quality of the food and drink. Eccentric old "Boss" Rush in his famous tavern near Smithfield (Big Crossings) even kept his poker under lock and key. The tavern signs so common in New England were known only in the earlier days of the Cumberland Road as many of the tavern names show. The majority of the great taverns bore on their signs only the name of their proprietor, the earliest landlord's name often being used for several generations. The advancing of the century can be noticed in the origin of such names as the National House, the United States Hotel, the American House, etc. The evolution in nomenclature is, plainly, from the sign or symbol to the landlord's name, then to a fanciful name. Another sign of later days was the building of verandas. The oldest taverns now standing are plain ones or the two story buildings rising abruptly from the pavement and opening directly upon it. Of this type is the Brownfield House at Uniontown and numerous half-forgotten houses which were early taverns in Pennsylvania and Ohio.