As is true of so many great western routes, so of this path--the bold Christopher Gist was the first white man of importance to leave reliable record of it. In 1750 he was employed to go westward for the Ohio Company. His outward route, only, is of importance here.[2] On Wednesday, October 31, he departed from Colonel Cresap's near Cumberland, Maryland and proceeded "along an old old Indian Path N 30 E about 11 Miles."[3] This led him along the foot of the Great Warrior Mountain, through the Flintstone district of Allegheny County, Maryland. The path ran onward into Bedford County, Pennsylvania, and through Warrior's Gap to the Juniata River. Here, near the old settlement Bloody Run, now Everett, the path joined the well-worn thoroughfare running westward familiarly known as the "Old Trading Path." Eight miles westward of this junction, near the present site of Bedford, a well-known trail to the Allegheny valley left the Old Trading Path and passed through the Indian Frank's Town and northwest to the French Venango--Franklin, Pennsylvania. Leaving this on his right, Gist pushed on west over the Old Trading Path. "Snow and such bad Weather" made his progress slow; from the fifth to the ninth he spent between what are now Everett in Bedford County and Stoyestown in Somerset County.[4] On the eleventh he crossed the north and east Forks of Quemahoning--often called "Cowamahony" in early records.[5] On the twelfth he "crossed a great Laurel Mountain"--Laurel Hill. On the fourteenth he "set out N 45 W 6 M to Loylhannan an old Indian Town on a Creek of Ohio called Kiscominatis, then N 1 M NW 1 M to an Indian's Camp on the said Creek."[6] The present town of Ligonier, Westmoreland County, occupies the site of this Indian settlement. "Laurel-hanne, signifying the middle stream in the Delaware tongue. The stream here is half way between the Juniata at Bedford and the Ohio [Pittsburg]."[7] Between here and the Ohio, Gist mentions no proper names. The path ran northwest from the present site of Ligonier, through Chestnut Ridge "at the Miller's Run Gap, and reached the creek again at the Big Bottom below the present town of Latrobe on the Pennsylvania Central Railway; there the trail forked ... the main trail [traveled by Gist], led directly westward to Shannopin's Town, by a course parallel with and a few miles north of the Pennsylvania Railway."[8] The following table of distances from Carlisle to Pittsburg was presented to the Pennsylvania Council March 2, 1754: