Brief No. 037
A Shining Patchwork
Words by Richard Ellis. Photograph by Daniel Wakefield Pasley.
"It’s here then that we move beyond the treacherous waterways and onto that lucrative ironclad corridor between Cumberland and Pittsburgh, later to become known as the Allegheny Passage. Today its 150 miles represent a shining patchwork of rails-to-trails. A veritable tunnel through time and space, encompassing the Eastern Continental Divide and the Mason—Dixon Line.1 And in a conservational pincer movement between the Pennsylvania Commonwealth and the National Parks Service, the General’s vision2 of a tether between the midwest and DC is now a free for all, a 334 mile shingle umbilicus holding the past and future together." — Borrowed from the Forward section of the forthcoming BROVET: CUMBERLAND PASSAGE PERMANENT
- Despite the common misunderstanding, slavery was practiced both south and north—in Delaware and New Jersey until 1865 and 1846, respectively—of the Mason–Dixon Line. In fact, the line was the compromise which ended a border dispute between the Maryland and Pennsylvania British Colonies. [↩]
- Having returned to his Mt Vernon estate after the war, Washington had ordered his slaves to hack away boughs and chisel the bluff to free up the view upon his beloved Potomac. In 1785, after an exploratory trip with his companion Dr James Craik up the Potomac over the Allegheny mountains and down the Ohio River, he established the Potomack Canal Company and began work on creating a network of canals to connect Georgetown with Cumberland, Maryland some 150 miles away. [↩]
