d, in time, became
imperative the roads were never hastily and imperfectly constructed;
they were built with an eye single to permanence and with due
allowance for generations of unintermittent and augmentative traffic.

These roads yielded their promoters modest dividends, but with the
completion in 1832 of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, bordering the
county just across the Potomac, transportation to and from Washington
(Georgetown) and Alexandria was materially cheapened and the earnings
of the turnpike companies suffered a corresponding decrease, the
income, in many cases, being barely sufficient to defray the expense
of maintenance. Tolls are now collected at only two points, in the
County.

[Footnote 13: No apology is offered for the omission of vital
statistics that might and would have been included in this department
had earnest appeals addressed to State officers and the State
Corporation Commission met with more courteous and, I might add,
dutiful consideration. Not the least assistance was vouchsafed by any
of them.--THE AUTHOR.]

The turnpike craze spread to Loudoun not long after the War of
Independence and culminated about forty years later. It wrought a
revolution in public travel, relatively nearly as great as that
brought about by the railway craze in more recent years. The corporate
names of some of the roads constructed through Loudoun before its
subsidence were, the Goose Creek and Little River Turnpike, Loudoun
and Berlin (now Brunswick, Md.) Turnpike, Ashby's Gap Turnpike,
Leesburg Turnpike, Leesburg and Snicker's Gap Turnpike, Little River
Turnpike and Snicker's Gap Turnpike. Their combined authorized capital
stock was $637,325, of which amount more than two-thirds was
subscribed by individuals, the State assuming the balance.

The system did not originate solely in a local want or demand along
the lines contemplated. Other causes were also at the bottom of the
movement. The settlement of the County was necessarily by progressive
though, at times, apparently simultaneous steps. First came the
settlement and location of one or two towns, and the opening of
communication between them; then the advent of the trapper, hunter,
and scout into the unsettled portion; then came the land grants and
the settlement in isolated localities; then the blazed trail to the
parent towns and to the cabin of the pioneer or the outposts; then the
drift-ways, cart-ways, and the local roads winding from cabin to
ca