Addison, Pennsylvania

This small Somerset County borough sits on one of the most historically dense stretches of the National Road. The town was originally platted by Peter Augustine, who called it Petersburg after himself. He lost the naming contest in eighteen thirty-one when residents renamed it Addison, after federal Judge Alexander Addison, who had upheld the law during the Whiskey Rebellion of the seventeen nineties.

Addison sits near one of the surviving tollhouses on Pennsylvania's portion of the National Road. The old stage road through town once carried a stream of coaches, drovers, and freight wagons heading west. Former taverns, now converted to homes, still line the road through the borough. Incorporated in nineteen twelve, Addison is one of those small places whose entire character was shaped by traffic it no longer sees.