Great Wagon Road

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1751 Fry-Jefferson map depicting 'The Great Waggon Road to Philadelphia'

The Great Wagon Road was a colonial American thoroughfare from Pennsylvania to North Carolina and from there to Georgia. It was the heavily traveled main route for settlement of the Southern United States, particularly the 'back country'. This was the area that received many German and Scots-Irish immigrants in the 18th century. The Scots-Irish and English from the Northern Border area were the largest group of immigrants from the British Isles before the American Revolution.^[1]

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 Warriors' Trail established by centuries of Native American travel. The Shenandoah portion of the road is also known as the Valley Pike. South of the 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.