Everything about The Great Wagon Road totally explained
The
Great Wagon Road was a
Colonial American 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. Portions of the Great Wagon Road traveled to present-day
Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania (about 30 miles northwest of York). Mechanicsburg derives its name from the many mechanics who set up shop there in order to benefit from the abundance of wagon trains traveling through the town. 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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