[40] _Landmarks of Old Prince William_, 481, 511.
In an effort to attract the increasing traffic to and from the west, Leesburg citizens incorporated in 1831 the Leesburg and Snickers' Gap Turnpike Company which built an improved road north from Clark's Gap to Snickers' Gap, as the old Williams' Gap had then come to be called; and this new road (which is the present Alexandria-Winchester Highway) took the traffic theretofore going through Vestal's Gap and has since been the northerly main route across the Blue Ridge.
To carry the old Ridge Road over Broad Run, we know that there was built, before 1755, one of the earliest highway bridges in Loudoun's territory of which record has been preserved; for on the 1755 edition of the Fry & Jefferson map a wooden bridge is shewn at that point. The picturesque stone bridge that now spans the stream, venerable as it appears, may not have been constructed before 1820, at about which time that part of the road was being improved by the Leesburg Turnpike Company; nevertheless in eastern Loudoun it is a popular legend that it was built by George Washington as a young man and the inhabitants of the neighbourhood firmly believe that to be true.
The third of the principal roads of colonial Loudoun is called by Fairfax Harrison the Colchester Road and is described by him as also, in its first beginning an Indian path, developed about 1728 by King Carter and his sons Robin and Charles from the Occoquan below the falls "past the future sites of Payne's Church and the present Fairfax Court House all the way to the Frying Pan run."[41] The Carters believed that there was copper on certain of their recently acquired lands and this road was developed to bring the ore to tidewater. It became known as the Ox Road and a year or so later joined Walter Griffin's Rolling Road running west across Little Rocky Run and eventually across Elk Lick and Bull Run, across the Carolina Road (near which crossing West's Ordinary was built), and so above the ford over Little River to the Blue Ridge Road to Williams' Gap. It was over this road that the youthful Washington returned in the spring of 1748 from his survey with George William Fairfax of the lands of Lord Fairfax in the valley and thus first set foot in the present Loudoun; crossing the Blue Ridge at Williams' Gap[42] they proceeded to William West's house, later to be licensed as West's Ordinary and still later as Lacey's. Incidentally this old building and landmark continued to stand until the year 1927 when it was quite needlessly and most unfortunately torn down.