Through all these years a stream of pioneers had been flowing westward, the current dividing at Fort Cumberland. Hundreds had wended their tedious way over Braddock's Road to the Youghiogheny and passed down by water to Kentucky, but thousands had journeyed south over Boone's Wilderness Road, which had been blazed through Cumberland Gap in 1775. All that was needed to turn the whole current toward the Ohio was a good thoroughfare. The thousands of people who had gone, by one way or another, into the trans-Ohio country, soon demanded statehood. The creation of the state of Ohio is directly responsible for the building of the Cumberland Road. In an act passed by Congress April 30, 1802, to enable the people of Ohio to form a state government and for admission into the Union, section 7 contained this 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."[21] Another law, passed March 3rd of the following year, appropriated three per cent of the five to laying out roads within the state of Ohio, and the remaining two per cent for laying out and making roads from the navigable waters, emptying into the Atlantic, to the river Ohio to the said state.[22] A committee, appointed to review the question, reported to the Senate December 19, 1805. At that time, the sale of land from July, 1802, to September 30, 1805, had amounted to $632,604.27, of which two per cent, $12,652, was available for a road to Ohio. This sum was rapidly increasing. Of the routes across the mountains, the committee studied none of those north of Philadelphia, or south of Richmond. Between these points five courses were considered: 1. Philadelphia--Ohio river (between Steubenville and mouth of Grave creek) 314 miles. 2. Baltimore--Ohio river (between Steubenville and mouth of Grave creek) 275 miles. 3. Washington--Ohio river (between Steubenville and mouth of Grave creek) 275 miles. 4. Richmond 317 miles. 5. Baltimore--Brownsville 218 miles. There were really but two courses to consider: Boone's Road and Braddock's Road. The former led through a thinly populated part of the country and did not answer the prescribed condition, that of striking the Ohio at a point contiguous to the state of Ohio. Consequently, in the report submitted by the committee we read as follows: