Several early inns and road features shaped travel and community life along the National Road. The Casselman Inn opened in 1842 under Solomon Sterner and was also known as Sterner House, Drovers' Inn, Farmers' Hotel, and Dorsey Hotel; during its years as a major stop for cattle drovers, a large outdoor corral stood there. A white cast iron mile marker was installed in 1835 when the State of Maryland assumed responsibility for the National Road from the federal government, showing distances to Cumberland, Maryland, Wheeling, West Virginia, and the next towns, Frostburg to the east and Petersburgh, now Addison, Pennsylvania, to the west. In 1845 Adam Schultz built a brick inn across the street from the Casselman Inn, and after the Schultz Inn was torn down, its materials were used to build a school on the same site. The National Hotel stood at the center of town until its demolition in 1984; an earlier tavern, the Layman House, had been built there in 1832, and Henry Fuller replaced it with the National Hotel in 1837, creating an establishment with 18 rooms and stabling for 40 horses. The Fuller Baker Log House, built about 1815, was most likely used as a tavern and is now a private residence. The building now known as Penn Alps Restaurant encloses an original log tavern called Little Crossings Inn, built by Jesse Tomlinson in 1818, later enlarged and remodeled around 1900, then later known as the Dixie Tavern. Tomlinson's Stone House Inn at Little Meadows was built in 1816 with walls two feet thick and fireplaces in 10 of its 18 rooms; it served as an inn, tavern, post office from 1822 to 1834, and polling place, remained an inn through the end of the 1800's, and is now a private residence.

Photo: J. J. Prats

Photo: J. J. Prats

Photo: Devry Becker Jones

Photo: J. J. Prats

Photo: J. J. Prats

Photo: J. J. Prats

Photo: J. J. Prats

Photo: Devry Becker Jones

Photo: J. J. Prats

Grantsville, Maryland · USA