GREAT WAGON ROAD

The 'Great Wagon Road' was a Colonial United States thoroughfare from Pennsylvania to North Carolina and from there to Georgia. It was the heavily travelled main route for settlement of the Southern United States, particularly the 'back country'.
Beginning in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Great Wagon Road passed through the towns of Lancaster and York in southeastern Pennsylvania. Turning southwest, the road crossed the Potomac River and entered the Shenandoah Valley at Winchester, Virginia, continuing down the valley via the Great Warrior's Trail. The Shenandoah portion of the road is also known as the Valley Pike. South of Shenandoah Valley, the road reached the Roanoke River at the town of Big Lick (today, Roanoke, Virginia).
From there, the Great Wagon Road passed through the Roanoke River Gap to the east side of the Blue Ridge, and continued south through the Piedmont region and the present-day North Carolina towns of Winston-Salem, Salisbury, and Charlotte, ultimately reaching Augusta, Georgia on the Savannah River.
South of Roanoke, the Great Wagon Road was also called the Carolina Road.
At Roanoke a road forked southwest, leading into the upper New River Valley and on to the Holston River in the upper Tennessee Valley, from which the Wilderness Road led into Kentucky.
Note that despite its present day name, the southern part of this road was by no means passable by wagons until later Colonial times. The 1751 Fry-Jefferson map mentions the term 'Waggon' only north of Winchester.

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Sources

Sources

★ Rouse, Parke, Jr: ''The Great Wagon Road'' (2004) Richmond: The Diaz Press. ISBN 0-87517-065-X.

★ http://www.waywelivednc.com/before-1770/wagon-road.htm