America's first interstate highway entered Pennsylvania here as the National Road, which started in Cumberland, connected to privately funded turnpikes from Baltimore, and eventually stretched through four states to Illinois. Looking east, early travelers rode and walked over several 3,000 foot Appalachian ridges toward the Chesapeake Bay and the port of Baltimore, while westbound horsemen, stagecoaches, and freight wagons crossed more peaks before descending into the Ohio River Valley and continuing toward the plains of the American heartland and the Mississippi River. Following old trails through what had once been Iroquois, Delaware, and Shawnee hunting lands, the National Road linked Colonial America with the Northwest Territory, carrying merchants, traders, and families from around the world seeking land, markets, and new lives. The Mason-Dixon Line also passes through this place. In 1763, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon arrived in America to settle the boundary dispute between Maryland and Pennsylvania. Limestone boundary stones weighing between 300 and 600 pounds were quarried in Great Britain and shipped to America, and when the terrain became too hilly west of Sideling Hill, Mason and Dixon set up large rock groupings around wooden posts instead. Leftover markers stored at Fort Frederick were finally installed in 1901 and 1903. Pig's Ear Road crosses the National Road at the State Line Methodist Church, which, along with its school, was moved there in 1900 from the Jasper Augustine property in Addison, Pennsylvania, and officially became the State Line Church in 1903. An early 1900s photograph looking west into Pennsylvania from the state line shows the old cast iron milepost marking 96 miles to Wheeling, West Virginia, as well as the original crushed stone surface of the National Road.

Photo: Devry Becker Jones (CC0)