Another interminable ascent carried me to a continuation of Chestnut Ridge, the densely forested spine I had explored with warden Don Stone. Rattling around in his dormobile, I had seen little of Pennsylvania beyond a whole lot of maples, but here, at Laurel Hill, the western aspect afforded a breathtaking view. If I couldn’t see California, whatever was glistening on the distant horizon had to be the Mississippi. Ahead of me, America appeared flat as a pancake, though of course it wasn’t. Chestnut Ridge was simply the last pinnacle over 2,000 feet for the next 2,000 miles. At the foot of the ridge, Uniontown, the first proper town since Cumberland, carved out a space in the forest. Relieved to be out of the mountains, I sped down the edge, shooting past traffic held back by 15 mph speed limits.
Jammed between prefabricated blocks housing Expert Tyre, Super America and the Columbia Energy Group, I stumbled on Uniontown’s Old West Schoolhouse, a log cabin erected in 1810. Currently owned by the National Road Heritage Park, the schoolhouse contained a two room information centre which was actually open. Inside I found Rachel Vaughn sat at a blank computer, engrossed in a John Grisham novel with the soundtrack from Titanic buzzing through her headphones. Rachel was nineteen, bright, helpful, and delighted to have somebody to talk to. Her summer job was proving stunningly dull, with considerably fewer visitors than her employers had led her to expect. She ran through the origins of the federal road for me, outlined the battle in Congress over funding, and explained how senators whose constituents lived a thousand miles from the proposed thoroughfare were reluctant to stump up for something they would see no direct benefit from. “It was kind of like asking Hungary to put in for a freeway from Cork to Dublin funded by the E.C.,” she observed.
Not only did Rachel know her history, she had a grasp on things European I had previously not encountered in America. She was good and knew it, and had no intention of making a career out of working for the Heritage Park.
“I’m tired of living round here,” she told me. “It gets worse every year. I’m getting out. I’m at Jackson School — sort of half way between here and Brownsville — training to become an elementary teacher for the hearing and sight impaired. There’s no demand for it round here. I’m hoping to move to Philadelphia. My boyfriend’s there. This place is terminal.”
A promotional paper for Uniontown made great play of Beesontown — its original name — being born on the same day the nation was founded. When the National Road came through, Henry Beeson’s hamlet of rural cottages was transformed into a ferment of industry, with stagecoach factories, blacksmiths, stables, leather workers, and all the ancillary services needed to tend travellers, animals and vehicles which had survived or were about to take on the rigours of crossing the Appalachians.
It wasn’t a big place but, since the 1950s, Uniontown had been on the skids. I didn’t have to walk far to see disheartening signs of boarded up buildings, flattened blocks and structural decay defacing the impressive facades of once illustrious department stores. The town’s motto, ‘Uniting tradition with innovation’, was only in evidence around the imposing stone courthouse. Built in the 1890s and resembling a stern English public school, the court was the focus of all legal activities appertaining to Fayette County. Either side of the building, along Alt. 40, a swarm of law firms were getting fat on the pollen of county crimes and misdemeanours. According to Rachel, attorneys were about the only people keeping Uniontown alive.
It was a familiar story of community meltdown after the implosion of the coal and steel industries, and the narrative dragged on through the remaining urban areas of Pennsylvania and the short ride across the panhandle of West Virginia. The bleakest town was Brownsville, eleven miles down the road and perched on a steep eastern bluff carved out by a broad bend in the Monongahela River. Picture a ski jump 300 feet wide flanked by flat faced, characterless shops and bars, and you’ve pretty well got Brownsville, at least where the National Road lunges over the river. The swoop was a funnel for a chilly wind which prowled menacingly through the town. Behind the top of the jump, peeking above a sycamore canopy, the bluff still supported the surfeit of ecumenical architecture which once blessed the town with the grand title of ‘The City of Spires’. Glittering they were not.
Cranking through the foothills of the Appalachians might have taken me to lower heights, but now the climbs came with disheartening regularity. After Beallesville, I gained the spine of Twelve Mile Ridge and was relieved the highway clung to the backbone all the way to Washington, PA, the third town on my route thus far to be named after Georgie-boy. Either side, the wooded slopes of Pennsylvania slipped down to lush valley bottoms jewelled with sparkling corn hoppers. The road became scarred with thin lines of tar sealing a shattering of cracks. Its scabby trail flowed from one side of the ridge to the other, through small communities like Scenery Hill which had found new life in old jugs. Antique shops abounded among the white wooden houses, each a chaos of farm tools, furniture and knick-knacks which barely looked second hand.
The character of the road was changing. It was now almost continuously marshalled by spick and span bungalows and small brick houses sitting pretty in acres of lawn. As I rode west, the tinny clatter of mowers cumulated to the pitch of feedback and the air was heavy with exhaust. Everywhere I looked people were sat on or striding behind grass cutters. Every last square centimetre of anything which could vaguely be called grass was diligently weeded and lovingly trimmed until a green fit for Tiger Woods was sculpted. It wasn’t difficult to see how America consumed more petrol in a year of mowing lawns than the UK did in a year of motoring.
The bleakest stretch of country was the short leg through West Virginia following the Ohio Creek down to Wheeling. A long gradual descent between high wooded cliffs ricocheted the road from one side of Valley Gorge to the other. In the space between rebounds, manky trailer homes had been levered nose-to-tail onto the verge. In the two metre strip between trailer and road, power and telephone poles were planted at drunken angles. From gaps beneath the trailers, children’s trundle toys overflowed onto the congealed oil and mud of the strip. The valley reminded me of one I had ridden down in Slovakia, except there the poverty was clean and house-proud.
Arriving in Wheeling should have been cause for celebration. Located beside the slothful Ohio, it was the river crossing surveyors on the first section of the National Road set their theodolite sights on. Built concurrently in short sections, the length from Cumberland to Wheeling was completed in 1811, seven years after the ground-breaking ceremony. By then, lobbying was well advanced for Congress to shell out for the second phase, across the forested undulations of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois to the banks of the Mississippi.
Unlike the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the federal highway was an immediate and outstanding success. After riding its length in 1816, Uriah Brown summed up what most farmers, civic leaders, entrepreneurs and members of the travelling public undoubtedly felt. ‘The goodness of God must have been in Congress unknowns to them; when they fell about to and Erected a Lane for the Making of this great Turnpike road which is the Salvation of those Mountains or Western Countrys and more benefit to the human family than Congress have any knowledge.’
And I would have celebrated reaching Wheeling, had it shown me one iota of welcome, but the town was as hostile to modern cyclists as it was to eighteenth century whites. Legend had it that ‘Wheeling’ was Delaware Indian for ‘Place of the Skull’, supposedly named after the indigenous people decapitated the first settlers and stuck their heads on poles.
Initially the ride into town wasn’t too harrowing. Where the Madonna of the Trail stood on an eight foot plinth in a lay-by beside the municipal golf course, the road was lined by walled gardens and large redbrick houses held high by mock doric columns. Possibly they were occupied by lecturers employed at the Jesuit University down the road. One conscientious academic with flowing grey locks, a crumpled white suit and deep Alabama drawl made it his business to give me a roadside tutorial on the sculpture. It was the second Madonna I had come across, an exact duplicate of one at Beallesville located opposite another golf club. Ten foot tall and cast in algonite stone, the statue depicted a pioneer woman nursing a baby while her young son clutched at her skirt. According to my professor, the statue was erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution in the late 1920s.
“A decade earlier,” he said, “the Daughters had set up a National Old Trails Committee in order to waymark some of the nation’s historically famous land routes. A metal plaque was initially proposed but it was thought this heroic sculpture by August Leimbach would stand out more.” It certainly did. Missouri granite mixed in the algonite coloured the Madonna shocking pink.
Since departing Washington, PA, the line of the National Road had been shadowed by Interstate 70. An eight lane girdle strapped round the midriff of America, I70 crosses nine states, falling two short of a coast-to-coast thoroughfare. Laid in the Fifties and Sixties, it by-passes all of the villages, most of the towns and some of the cities on Route 40, summarily retiring settlements which once fed off the National Road. They have become sleeper communities, their reveries disturbed twenty-four seven by the incessant whine of rubber emanating from the interstate a quarter of a mile to the north.
On the edge of Wheeling’s town centre, the interstate smothered the old highway. Off to the right, a more recent Route 40 took me round the back of the metropolis, through a cacophony orchestrated by panel beaters, exhaust fitters and tyre retreaders. The highway climbed a cliff face builders of the National Road would never have attempted to a vantage point on Mount Wood overlooking the whole grotty city. Wheeling was a steel town, home to an outpost of the Pittsburgh Steel Corporation, but it was the rusting hulk of an abandoned mill which dominated the skyline. It hung in the balance how long rolled steel would continue to flow from Wheeling’s remaining foundries. Half of Pittsburgh Steel was owned by Don Yang Tinplate Ltd and Nittetsu Shoja, names which suggest the collapse of the Tiger economies could have more than a passing concern for workers in West Virginia. Outside Big Boy Restaurant & Market, a hand-written sign read, ‘Support the Soup Kitchen of Greater Wheeling by Buying a Tomato for a Dollar’.
Wheeling gave me my first taste of having to fight for space on the American blacktop. By the time I reached the river, I was a hardened campaigner, deaf to abuse and skilled at dodging drivers trying to carve me up. I thought I was surviving well, making sustained if dangerous progress, until I reached the river crossing. At Wheeling I discovered cyclists are prohibited from entering America west of the Ohio.
There were two bridges thundering across the river, both exclusively for interstate traffic. Somewhere in Wheeling there had be a way for cyclists to cross to the west bank, and there was, according to those I asked, if I was prepared to ride five miles south to a toll bridge out of town or a further twelve miles to the bridge at Moundsville. I manhandled my bike over the concrete barrier onto I-70 and ignored the blaring of car horns.
On the far side, beyond Wheeling Island, I caught my breath on a bench trying to sell me ‘Happy Hubcaps’ to cheer up your auto, and soaked up the atmosphere. I had reached the historic artery which once kept the heart of America pumping. Down the ‘wet road’ flowed trade with the north and south. Across it, ferries hauled creaking Conestoga wagons full of whiskey, corn and timber to the start of the new trans-Appalachian highway. Thirty years later, the Forty-Niners crossed the other way over the first suspension bridge, completed that year. Travelling in coaches and wagons, on horseback and foot, they crossed the Ohio River and entered the Old West. The frontier was ever on the move, heading for the Pacific, and Wheeling was the second Gateway to the West I passed through.
I gave those thoughts about five minutes. Any longer and the atmosphere I was soaking up would have asphyxiated me. The bench was on a lonely island of concrete prowled either side and overhead by a continuous stream of articulated rigs belching clouds of black smoke. Wheezing from an overdose of exhaust, I left Wheeling feeling depressed and angry. It wasn’t just that the town was utterly awful or that its drivers had been unbelievably intolerant. Nor was it that my injured abdomen was beginning to make itself felt. Since Ohiopyle, my mother-in-law had never been far from my thoughts. The uncertainty of her condition made it impossible to focus on what I was supposed to be doing in the States, let alone enjoy it.
My increasing negativity was further fuelled by the problem of finding suitable places to kip. The National Road was studded with hotels, motels and B & Bs, many of them contemporary to the time of the Forty-Niners but, like them, I was travelling on a shoestring. Between impenetrable forests, insurgent lawns and fields deep in corn, there wasn’t a lot of spare land for wild camping, and doors I knocked at mostly weren’t answered. If they were, the occupant wasn’t going to entertain a Brit sticking four pegs into their sea of lovingly rolled green. This was made abundantly clear in East Richmond when the door of a log bungalow swung open to reveal a middle-aged woman striking a pose straight out of a John Ford Western. She was holding a pump-action shotgun angled to blast my knees away. Her response to my entreaty was repeated flicks of the shotgun and something akin to, “Getaway with you over the hill.” She didn’t see me for dust.
Twenty-five miles into Ohio, the National Road was again gobbled up by Interstate 70, forcing me onto a loop of country roads which swung south past Senecaville Lake. The map indicated it was a State Park with official campsites. After three nights of sleeping in ditches, I rode like a man possessed towards a steaming hot shower.
Speeding down the tight hills clasping the reservoir, I swept into the first site and stopped just beyond the doorway to the reception booth. As I dismounted, a security guard lunged out of the cubicle, hand on revolver butt, and charged towards me. I swung round to see who he was chasing, but it was me. “Resort Grounds is a private site,” the sexagenarian panted, his hand on my shoulder more leaning than grabbing. He said he would have “plugged” me had I set a foot inside the compound.
The second ground — a State Park site — was busy with weekend campers, but the warden had no space for a single person tent. Had I arrived with a fifty foot RV, a speed boat, a couple of tents for the kids, a barbecue with table, chairs, strings of outdoor lighting, fold-out patio and a selection of illuminated garden ornaments, like any normal camper, she had a couple of plots vacant at an overnight price equivalent to two nights in a hotel.
The third and last site was also run by the State Park and did cater for hiker/bikers. Unfortunately a tornado had swept through the valley the week before and swamped the mini plots. Though dry, the rangers were reluctant to allow me to pitch on the hard mud. It took four of them to come to this decision, a conference involving myself and the warden sandwiched between two squad cars summoned by her shortwave radio. Exhausted, mad and oozing sweat from every orifice, I rode away cursing, determined to crawl into bed that night smelling sweet and awake someplace where I could chill for a couple of days.
Even the Forty-Niners, hell bent on reaching the gold fields, took one day in seven out. For those in a joint stock company, it was written into their constitution that Sunday was a day of rest when the men would repair and maintain, and observe the Sabbath. Until things began to fall apart in the wilderness west of Kansas, they staged interdenominational services, often joined by independent travellers who likewise took the Sunday off, if only because teamsters and stagecoach companies shut up shop on the seventh day.
As the dull chill of a whimpering evening triggered a longing to be home and curled up with Sandy, I returned to a National Road released from the suffocation of I-70. Two and a half hours later, I staggered into Spring Valley Campground, south of Cambridge. I was met by a broad smile and a warm bowl of butterscotch popcorn, freshly exploded in a sliced off oil barrel slung over a roaring wood fire. Happy campers stuffing their faces welcomed me out of the dark like a prodigal son. On a day when I felt thoroughly harassed and unwanted, it was nice to know not everybody in the East was a miserable bastard.
Spring Valley had been chewed up by the same tornado which wiped out the backpacker plots at the Senecaville campsite. Sat under the awning of a recreation vehicle which hadn’t driven anywhere in five years, a retired couple told me about popping down from their home in Wheeling to clean up the mess.
“We found our picnic furniture wedged up there in the woods,” the old boy said, jerking a thumb at the canopy of beeches behind the site. “The neighbour’s RV lay on its side with our washing pole through its windshield and a load of torn branches over it.”
Saplings had been ripped up, van roofs prized open and the ground swam in water sucked up by the twister at Senecaville Lake and spun out at Spring Valley. Signs of the destruction remained in the shredded canopies, snapped lattice fences and trees stripped of leaves a season before autumn.
Although favouring a belt from Texas to Nebraska known as Tornado Alley, twisters are not uncommon in states located between the Appalachians and Mississippi River. The previous year was not only the hottest on record by a length, it was also the worst for tornadoes. Ohio had been hit by sixteen. On a sliding scale of one to five, the twister that swung through Spring Valley was a baby, barely reaching F2 on the Fujita scale, but it had taken a life. It was one of maybe a thousand unremarkable tornadoes which would swirl across the States that year. If unremarkable in their intensity, they were remarkable in their number. Climate change had triggered an increase in local activity in recent years, particularly between April and July, and everybody I spoke to at Spring Valley agreed the weather was turning vicious.
As I was to discover the further west I travelled, the weather in this country is the one force people cannot ignore. While the media indulged anybody who could string together an argument purporting to prove there was no link between exhaust emissions, global warming and climate change, those I met at Spring Valley were not convinced. But as a woman who sagged in all the wrong places said to me at the poolside, “Hell, we’re just as worried by climate change as you guys but, hey, we’re resigned to it.”
While basting his skin in Aftersun Lotion which sizzled on contact, her husband added, “Issues like global warming have become big yawns in this country. To do anything about them requires sacrifices Americans and the multinationals are simply not prepared to make. Sacrifice is for losers and every American wants to be a winner, regardless that ultimately all of us lose. It’s all very petty-minded.”
I left Spring Valley a new man, smelling more human than primate and feeling more optimistic about my journey. On a day when temperatures were nudging into the forties and you could spit-roast a groundhog without a flame, I rode fully clothed, every inch of me covered or shaded. On the radio, a public service announcement by the Environment Protection Agency worked hard to encourage the nation to save energy by turning off the TV when not watching it and turning off lights when leaving a room. Their coup de grâce, however, was clearly designed to make a major dent in America’s generous contribution to global warming. “And, folks,” the voice said, “decide what you want out of the fridge before opening the door and being indecisive.”
If it seems a strange thing to clip onto a handlebar, I rarely make a long journey without my FM radio. Aside from the news and weather forecast, a little on-bike entertainment goes a long way when the road ahead has nothing to offer but a whole lot of tarmac. In foreign countries, it is also invaluable for getting a handle on the lingo. I could now say, “Hey!” as fluently as any American, but today I was in the mood for a sing-a-long. The landscape had changed again. Pedalling was no longer hard work. Gone were the suffocating rows of bungalows, the short crippling hills and dark forests. I rode across gentle undulations, rolling between bean fields and leatherwood copses. For the first time, the vast expanse of the deep blue sky impressed itself upon me.