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The Great Wagon Road is a historic trail in the eastern United States that was first traveled by indigenous tribes, and later explorers, settlers, soldiers, and travelers. It extended from British Pennsylvania to North Carolina, through the Great Appalachian Valley, and from there to Georgia.
When surveying the Road as Postmaster, Benjamin Franklin injured his arm when he fell from a wagon and bounced through a series of deep ruts. The Great Wagon Road was the key supply line to the American resistance during the American Revolution, especially in the South.
Following routes established by Native Americans, the Great Wagon Road enabled eighteenth-century travel from Philadelphia and its hinterlands westward to Lancaster and then south into the backcountry of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.
The Great Wagon Road started at the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia and would one day stretch all the way to the Savannah River at Augusta, Georgia – a distance of over 735 miles. In the 1720s, however, the road extended only to the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
Jan 28, 2020 · The Great Wagon Road cut more directly south, through Franklin County and the State Crossings area. The road had previously been a Native American path. With the establishment of the United States, it became a highway for immigrants.
The Great Wagon Road was the most important frontier road in the state's western Piedmont during the eighteenth century. Sometimes called the "Great Philadelphia Wagon Road," it began in Philadelphia, crossed westward to Gettysburg, turned south to Hagerstown, Md., continued south to Winchester, Va., through the Shenandoah Valley to Roanoke ...
Then, in the mid-1700s, Pennsylvania Germans joined their neighbors on the tedious trek. As newcomers flocked southward, the population of the North Carolina backcountry grew at an unprecedented rate. The path to Carolina came to be called the Great Wagon Road.
