Long before the Sony plant was built outside New Stanton, years before steel mills and turnpikes were envisioned, Westmoreland and Allegheny counties were part of a wilderness world of large trees, swamps, mosquitoes and raccoons.

		Related article Following Braddock's Trail

For centuries, Native Americans had laid down pathways through the muck, but roads? No roads at all.

In June, 1755, a British general named Edward Braddock set out to march several thousand men, their supplies and food, and a few heavy guns from Maryland to Fort Duquesne, where he hoped to teach a lesson to a band of Frenchmen.

Braddock had a map, but it showed only rivers. No mountain cliffs, swamps or bogs, no hostile Indians, insects or blistering summer humidity. To get their guns from Maryland to what would someday be Pittsburgh, Braddock's Irish and Scottish troops had to hack their way along Indian trails, widening them as they traveled deeper into the wilderness and the summer. And they did all that for almost nothing.

Around what's now Kennywood Park and the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, Braddock's troops were attacked that July 9, on the site of the town now named for him. The French and Indians forced them all the way back to Jumonville, near Uniontown. Fayette County.

A week ago, a sculptor from Shadyside named Peter Calaboyias and his helpful nephew Dimitri Focaros of Oakmont got a feel for what those long-forgotten soldiers suffered during that fateful summer.

On a hot Sunday afternoon they followed, as well as they could, the path Braddock blazed through present-day Westmoreland County. At four locations they found some equally forgotten historic markers meant to memorialize the old Braddock Road.

They worked the 120-pound cast-iron tablets from their steel plinths and wrestled them into the back of Calaboyias' van. For three days they sanded, welded and re-painted the roadside signs. And on an equally hot Thursday afternoon, they put them back.

The markers were placed about six miles apart. Each tells of a day in Braddock's march across the countryside and uses the site-name given by the troops who camped there.

Some are gone altogether, victims of road-widening, traffic accidents, vandals or neglect.

But the Salt Lick Camp sign survives just outside the Sony plant off old Route 119, remembering Braddock's stay there July 3, 1755. A few miles away is Thicketty Camp, along a complicated series of back roads near Hunker. That marker stands in a driveway -- the driveway entrance is y-shaped to accommodate it. Inevitably, someone had run over it.

It snapped in half, Calaboyias said. Someone had the pieces in a garage for a while. He welded them back together and bolted the freshly furbished sign back into place, right where a historical group had put it in 1932.

"That's a nice thing about these particular markers," said Tom Headley, head of Westmoreland Heritage, a private historical advocacy group that's behind the marker project. "These were paid for back in 1932, with nickels and dimes raised by local schoolchildren."

Two other signs, Monacatootha Camp and Three Springs Camp, also were repainted and remounted.

The refurbishing, and several other Braddock-oriented projects this summer, were paid for with a $9,800 Westmoreland County tourism development grant, Headley said.

Braddock's trail is marked by several types of signs, put up by historical and highway commissions, Daughters of the American Revolution, another group that celebrated the 200th anniversary of George Washington's birth in 1932, or a brilliant Braddock scholar named John Kennedy Lacock. This enthusiast led historic pilgrimages, from Maryland to just shy of Pittsburgh, down the length of Braddock's trail in 1908, 1909 and 1932.

Lacock died after taking a fall on the rocks at Jumonville Glen, where Braddock died of injuries suffered at his last disastrous battle.

Calaboyias and Focaros, both of them volunteers, didn't fall prey to "violent fevers" or "friendly fire," shattered wagons or many of the other disasters Braddock's men faced. But mosquitoes and sunburn, yes. And skinned knees.

But it was worth it, the artist said.

"Before we started this project, I was like anyone else in Pittsburgh: I'd heard of Braddock, I knew he was some kind of pioneer, and they'd named the town after him. But once I started looking into the story, it was fascinating. It spread out from Virginia where their ships came in from Ireland, right up to where the swimming pool is in White Oak, where George Washington joined Braddock -- there's a plaque up there -- and down to Braddock itself, where the whole march turned into a nightmare.

"And the Carnegie Library in Braddock, they have this incredible treasure house of information on him, on the whole story. See? You volunteer to do a little job for a friend, and you end up learning a great deal."

Westmoreland Heritage is producing a day-trip driving tour of Braddock's Road historic sites and markers. Copies will be available at the end of June; call 724-838-8050 for details or see the Web site at www.westmorelandheritage.org.