The Ray Marker, 4 miles, honors the memory of Joseph Ray, who was born near this place. Ray was the author of Ray's Arithmetic, long a standard textbook in many schools of the country.

An old Milestone of the National Road, 4.9 miles, indicated to early travelers that they were still 10 miles from Wheeling. Today, the city has so grown that its corporate limits are less than four miles distant. The mileages that appear on the iron mileposts, now painted white, are inaccurate because of the rerouting of the highway in many places.

Roneys Point, 5.1 miles, (830 alt., 213 pop.), a shipping center for the Ohio County Farmers' Co-operative Association, was a lively spot in the days when stagecoaches of the Good Intent and Sims lines carried gay parties of travelers to the Old Stone Tavern (R), which remains much as it was when built in 1818. A sunburst transom over the door, the old woodwork, and the massive fireplaces are still in place. Originally a two-story stone building with 11 rooms and a large hall, it was enlarged years later with a 9-room addition.

Triadelphia (Gr., three brothers), 6.3 miles (745 alt., 302 pop. is a quiet old village with few reminders of its early importance as stagecoach stop and summer resort. Incorporated in 1829, it was name for three intimate friends, Colonel Josias Thompson, Amasa Brow, and John D. Foster, who settled here about 1800 and donated the townsite.

The old Green Hotel (R), abandoned years ago to village idlers who lounge on its long veranda, served statesmen and other travelers on the National Road for more than a century. The two-story, T-shaped frame building, first known as the Lawson House, was erected about 1800 by Colonel Josias Thompson. Until the day of the automobile the hotel was a popular summer resort, known the length of the pike as much for the genial hospitality, flowing whiskers, and broad-brimmed hat of its genial manager, Joseph Green, as for the menagerie he kept in the back yard. Beside the hotel stands a weathered and crumbling monument, representing four angels with uplifted arms, carved by Roman Catholic masons in honor of a priest who journeyed from Pittsburgh each Sunday to say Mass for the workers constructing the highway. Placed here about 1811 to await the building of a church, it had so crumbled by 1861, when a church was final built, that it was left to molder away here.

The highway crosses Middle Wheeling Creek, 7.3 miles, on a bridge constructed in 1936 to replace the hazardous S-bridge (L). The natural route for the National Road was the old trail along the northern bank of the creek, but the capricious and charming Lydia Shepherd, wife of Moses Shepherd, was determined to have the road pass her house on the southern bank. She appealed to Henry Clay, who had often been a guest at the Shepherd mansion (see below), and persuaded him to use his influence in having the highway routed as she desired, even though it necessitated the difficult construction of an S-bridge here and of another in Elm Grove.

The Florence Crittenden Home for Unfortunate Girls (L), 7.4 miles, erected in 1910 to care for unmarried mothers in need, is supported by State and private funds.

Monument Place (open), 8.2 miles, a large Georgian Colonial mansion of gray stone erected by Moses Shepherd in 1798, stands (L) on elm-shaded grounds sloping down to the northern bank of Wheeling Creek. Two slender Corinthian columns support a small portico with pediment. The heavy wooden door, joined with pegs, has a three-inch keyhole through which to operate the bolt, a huge bar. Over the doors are sunburst transoms. The interior woodwork, mantels, cornices, and paneling are hand carved in a distinctive pattern for each room. The Mystic Shrine of the Masonic lodge, which now owns Monument Place, has restored with originals and reproductions the furnishings of the library, dining room, ballroom, master bedroom, and guest room, in which many distinguished persons slept on their visits to the Shepherds. From the high ceilings hang crystal chandeliers, originally lighted with candles. Silken cords are looped over the doorways to the Henry Clay room and to the ballroom where General Lafayette, John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, President James K. Polk, and others were feted.

David Shepherd, father of Colonel Moses Shepherd, came to this section in 1777 to settle a large tract of land granted him by Governor Patrick Henry, and erected Fort Shepherd, which was destroyed by Indians in the same year. The Indians spared the gristmill because the revolving water wheel fascinated them. The fort, rebuilt in 1786, stood until 1798 when Moses Shepherd tore it down to erect his mansion on the site. Shepherd made a fortune as contractor on the National Road, and he and his wife, Lydia, entertained lavishly. Henry Clay was a frequent visitor even before the building of the highway, and this friendship is said to have been responsible for Clay's sponsorship of Wheeling as the terminus of the route. After her husband's death, Lydia Shepherd managed the estate until she died, at the age of 101, having outlived her second husband, General Daniel Cruger.

On the grounds stands a Monument to Henry Clay, a sandstone figure representing the Goddess of Liberty, erected by the Shepherds in honor of their friend; the base of the monument is inscribed, "Time will bring every amelioration and refinement most gratifying to rational man, and the humblest flower plucked under the tree of Liberty is more to be desired than all the trappings of royalty." Near the driveway is a Sundial, erected by the Shepherd family, with this inscription: "The noiseless foot of Time steals softly by, And ere we think of manhood age draws nigh."

The old Stone Mill (L), 8.5 miles, was erected about 1826 by Daniel Cruger, second husband of Lydia Shepherd, and has been in continuous operation since that time. The old Stone House (R), 8.6 miles, a square two-story structure used as a lunch room, was erected about 1820 as a stagecoach station and was known successively as the Gooding House, the French House, and the Roeteger House.

At the entrance to the Wheeling Municipal Park (R), 9.2 miles, stands the Madonna of the Trail Monument, erected by the D.A.R. as a memorial to the mothers of covered wagon days. One of hundreds of identical statues scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the white granite monument represents a woman in pioneer dress, with a baby in her arms and a small child clinging to her skirts. In the park are two lakes, a swimming pool, tennis courts, picnic grounds, 9-hole golf course, and a dancing pavilion.

Altenheim (L), 11.3 miles, a home for dependent older women, founded in 1896 by Anton Reymann, a Wheeling philanthropist, occupies a large red brick building, once the Bellview Hotel, popular in the early nineteenth century as a stagecoach station.

On the crest of Wheeling Hill is the McCulloch's Leap Marker (L), 13.2 miles, a tablet commemorating the feat of Major Samuel McCulloch, Indian scout and soldier, who, according to tradition, rode his horse down the precipitous 150-foot cliff into Wheeling Creek (L) to escape a band of Indians. Leading reinforcements from his fort at Short Creek to the aid of besieged Fort Henry, McCulloch was cut off from his company and forced to ride for his life to Fort Van Meter. When Indians blocked this avenue of escape, he took refuge on the summit of this hill. Confident that they had him cornered, the Indians closed in for the kill, but McCulloch spurred his horse over the cliff and a few minutes later rode safely from the creek.

The Mingo, 13.3 miles, a bronze figure of an Indian warrior standing on a stone base with right arm outstretched, was erected by the Kiwanis Club in commemoration of the Mingo whom the whites supplanted in the Ohio Valley. West of the statue US 40 descends to the business center of Wheeling.

Wheeling, 13.9 miles, (678 alt., 61,659 pop.) (see Wheeling). Wheeling is at the junction with US 250 (see Tour 22c) and State 2 (see Tour 19c and b).

The Suspension Bridge, 14 miles, which spans the Ohio River between Wheeling and Wheeling Island, was the longest single span in the country at the time of its construction in 1856. This bridge and its predecessor, destroyed by a storm in 1854, occasioned long and bitter controversy between Wheeling and Pittsburgh (see Wheeling).

Wheeling Island, 14.3 miles, a large suburb of Wheeling, is often swept by floods; in 1884, 1913, and 1936, the island was completely inundated. After the regular annual flood the islanders clean up the wreckage, rebuild their houses, and calmly go about their business until the waters rise again the next spring. The island was bought from the Indians by Ebenezer Zane, who, it is said, gave them a barrel of whisky for it.

On the island is Wheeling Downs, S. Penn St., a half-mile race track opened in 1937 on the grounds of the State Fair Park. Races are held here from late May to late June, and from late August to late September. The pari-mutuel system of betting on horse races, legal in West Virginia, is used here.

US 40 crosses the Ohio River on a steel bridge (automobiles, 5¢ pedestrians, 1¢) to the Ohio Line, 15.4 miles, at the eastern limit of Bridgeport, Ohio (see Ohio Guide).