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From: PHHGENE <>
Subject: [RHEA-L] Early American Trails and Roads: Part 2
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 00:31:27 EST


THE SANTA FE TRAIL
This trail from Missouri to Santa Fe was the oldest and the first over which
wagons were used in the westward expansion beyond the Mississippi River. It
was primarily a commerical route, carrying a stream of merchants' wagons
until
it was replaced ty the coming of the railroad in 1880. In 1821 a mule pack
train had left from Franklin, Missouri, to travel to Santa Fe on what is
later
known at the Mountain Route. The next year's expedition avoided the
mountains,
leaving the Arkansas River and heading across the arid plains for the
Cimarron
River; this route became known as the Cimarron cutoff. During the early years
of commerce, much of the route was within Mexican territory. Not until 1848
when the Mexican War ended was the entire trail officially within American
territory.

THE UPPER ROAD
The Upper Road branched off from the King's Highway at Fredericksburg,
Virginia, and went southwest through Hillsboro, Salisbury, and Charlotte in
North Carolina, then on to Spartanburg and Greenville in South Carolina. The
road generally followed the old Occaneechee Path which went from Bermuda
Hundred on the James River, and Old Fort Henry (now Petersburg) southwest to
the Indian trading town of the Occaneechi which existed by 1675 on an island
in the Roanoke River at about the location of today's Clarksville, Virginia,
close to the present Virginia and North Carolina state line. From that
location the trading trail went both north and south. The Trading Path
divided
at the Trading Ford of the Yadkin River, one branch turning toward Charlotte,
the other through Salisbury to Island Ford on the Catawba, to the north of
present Lake Norman. DeSoto and his cavaliers were perhaps the first white
men
to use portions of the great Occaneechi Path (1540). Some of the people
associated with Fort Henry were Col. Abraham Wood, Thomas Batts, Robert
Fallam, James Needham, Gabriel Arthur, and John Lederer. From 1700-1750,
active trading was carried on by white emigrants with Indian villages. After
1740, the proprietary governor of the Granville District began to issue
grants
to Quakers and others from the tidewater counties of North Carolina and
Virginia, attracting them into the northern half of North Carolina. By 1750,
the Upper Road became an important wagon route for southbound migrations into
that portion of North Carolina. During the Revolutionary War, the road was
used extensively for troop movements in the South--relating to the battles at
Guilford Courthouse, King's Mountain, and Cowpens.

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