In winter the road was almost impassable; Brodhead wrote Richard Peters: "The great Depth of Snow upon the Alleghany and Laurel Hills have prevented our Getting every kind of Stores, nor do I expect to get any now until the latter End of April."[80] General Irvine wrote his wife January 8, 1782: "If the road was fit for sleighing I could now go down (to Carlisle) snugly, but it is quite impracticable; it is barely passable on horseback." Fort Pitt was invariably supplied with regular troops from Lancaster or Carlisle, which marched over the Pennsylvania Road.[81] CHAPTER VII THE PENNSYLVANIA ROAD Such had become the importance of the Pennsylvania Road that, soon after the Revolutionary struggle, Pennsylvania took active steps to improve it. On the twenty-first day of September an act of the Assembly of Pennsylvania gave birth to the great thoroughfare at first called "The Western Road to Pittsburg," and familiarly known since as the Pittsburg or the Chambersburg-Pittsburg Pike.[82] This state road was, as heretofore recorded, one hundred and ninety-seven miles in length from Carlisle to Pittsburg. The road built in 1785-87 follows practically the course of the present highway between the same points. Here and there the traveler may see the olden track a few rods distant on his right or left; at points it lies several miles to the south. The present Pittsburg Pike passes through Greensburg, while old Hannastown on Forbes's Road lies three miles to the northwest. The old route was a little less careful as to hills than the new, and made a straighter line across the country; the telephone companies have taken advantage of this and send their wires along the easily discerned track of the old road at many points. There is no point perhaps where the old road of 1785 is so plainly to be remarked as on the side of the upper end of Long Hollow Run, Napier township, Bedford County, a few miles west of historic little Bedford.[83]