Europeans first began to settle in the region in 1748, when the first Ohio Company, an English land speculation company, won a grant of 200,000 acres (800 km²) in the upper Ohio Valley. From a post at present-day Cumberland, Maryland, the company began to construct an wagon road to the Monongahela River employing a Delaware Indian chief named Nemacolin and a party of settlers headed by Capt. Michael Cresap to begin widening the track into a road. It mostly followed the same route as an ancient Amerindian trail which is now known as Nemacolin's Trail. The river crossing and flats at Redstone creek, was the earliest point and shortest distance for the descent of a wagon road. Later in the war, the site fortified as Fort Burd (now Brownsville) was one of several possible destinations. Another alternative was the divergent route that became Braddock's Road a few years later through present-day New Stanton. In the event, the colonists did not succeed in improving the Amerindian path to a wagon road much beyond the Cumberland Narrows pass before they were confronted by hostile Native Americans. The colonists later mounted a series of expeditions in order to accomplish piecemeal improvements to the track.