[41] _Landmarks_, 423; also C. O. Van Devanter in _Loudoun County Breeders Magazine_, spring, 1931.
[42] Washington's _Journal Of My Journey Over the Mountains_. Edited by Dr. J. M. Toner in 1892. p. 52.
The Colchester Road continued to be a main thoroughfare up to about 1806 when the construction of Little River Turnpike diverted most of its travel and the new road with its branches became the principal highway system in southern Loudoun.
The Virginia roads in the early days were in terrible condition for wheeled traffic. Their most earnest defenders can only allege that they were no worse than other American roads of those days and better than many, a defense that damns without even the proverbial faint praise. Englishmen of the period were still asleep in their attitude toward road building and many of the highways of England seem to have been as bad as those in America. One peculiarity of the Virginia road was its general lack of side-fencing. Adjacent property owners were quite apt to run their boundary fences across the highway, leaving a gate for the traveller to open and pass through. Curious as this may seem to us, it was not wholly without its advantage; for where the highway had become a sink-hole of mud, it thus was possible for the passer-by to make as wide a detour through adjacent fields or woods as might be necessary to avoid the obstruction. This throws light upon the effort at Georgetown, predecessor settlement of the larger Leesburg, to have the course of the Carolina Road as it passed through that hamlet definitely established by the court as early as 1742 and again in 1757.[43]
[43] Balch Library Clippings, III, 41 and 53.
Bridges were few, far between, and primitive. There was, as we have shewn, a wooden bridge prior to 1755 carrying the Ridge Road over Broad Run and it is believed that prior to 1739, the same road crossed Difficult near Colvin Run over a bridge of sorts; but for the most part fords were used to cross streams, or ferries in the case of the Potomac and other great rivers. When fords and ferries failed, the mounted traveller swam his horse across, leaving the wayfarer on foot to such more precarious adventure as conditions and his courage offered.