The traveler will notice still the mileposts which mark the great road's successive steps. Those on the eastern portion of the road are of iron and were made at the foundries at Connellsville and Brownsville. Major James Francis had the contract for making and delivering those between Cumberland and Brownsville. John Snowdan had the contract for those between Brownsville and Wheeling. They were hauled in six-horse teams to their sites. Those between Brownsville and Cumberland have recently been reset and repainted. The milestones west of the Ohio River are mostly of sandstone, and are fast disappearing under the action of the weather. Some are quite illegible though the word "Cumberland" at the top can yet be read on almost all. In central Ohio, through the Darby woods, or "Darby Cuttings," the mileposts have been greatly mutilated by vandal woodchoppers, who knocked off large chips with which to sharpen their axes. The bed of the Cumberland Road was originally eighty feet in width. In Ohio at least, property owners have encroached upon the road until, in some places, ten feet of ground has been included within the fences. This matter has been brought into notice where franchises for electric railway lines have been granted. In Franklin County, west of Columbus, Ohio, there is hardly room for a standard gauge track outside the roadbed, where once the road occupied forty feet each side of its axis. When the property owners were addressed with respect to the removal of their fences, they demanded to be shown quitclaim deeds for the land, which, it is unnecessary to say, were not forthcoming from the state. Hundreds of contracts, calling for a width of eighty feet, can be given as evidence of the original width of the road.[74] In days when it was considered the most extraordinary good fortune to have the Cumberland Road pass through one's farm, it was not considered necessary to obtain quitclaim deeds for the land.