On April 23, 1791, at Stony Batter in Cove Gap, a bustling trading post owned by Scotch-Irish immigrant James Buchanan, packhorses and wagons arrived along the main route through Pennsylvania from Baltimore to the west as Elizabeth Buchanan gave birth to James Buchanan, who became the 15th President of the United States in 1857. James Buchanan Sr. named the place Stony Batter after his ancestral homeland in Northern Ireland. The site was active with teamsters, waggoners, frontiersmen, and immigrants trading goods or seeking a better life on the western frontier. From this trading post, goods were transferred from wagon to packhorse and carried over Cove Mountain on an old American Indian trail that was improved in 1768 into a bridle path to McConnellsburg and northward to the Pennsylvania Road, formally the Forbes Trail. Traces of the old pack trail are believed to remain along the hillside above, and Pennsylvania Route 16 follows portions of this old trade route from Waynesboro to McConnellsburg.
