Early American Trails and Roads... Continued. See "Early American Trails and Roads: Part 1" for details. THE MOHAWK (IROQUOIS) TRAIL The Mohawk Trail of New York, also known as the Iroquois Trail, extended from Albany west to the eastern end of Lake Erie, where Buffalo is now located. This was the most northerly route through the Appalachian Mountains, leading from New York's Hudson Valley along the Mohawk River on to the Great Lakes. It was used heavily by New York's early emigrants and was much involved with the state's early history. Today's maps show the travel route as the New York Thruway (I-90) from Albany west. From about 1680 the French-Iroquois Country was a major stronghold. A wagon trail reached from Albany to Lake Erie after the French and Indian War and became a part of the route followed by Loyalists into Upper Canada, later to become Ontario. The Mohawk Turnpike opened as far as Utica by 1793. In the 1820s this route became that of the Erie Canal, and in 1845 it became the route of the New York Central Railroad. THE MORMON TRAIL The Mormon Trail stretched nearly 1,400 miles across prairies, sagebrush flats, and steep mountains. Each had its challenges for the early wagon trains and the later handcarts. The Mormon Trail originated in Nauvoo, Illinois, and extended westward to Utah where they established Salt Lake City. In 1845, to allay violence and night-riding, Brigham Young and the Twelve agreed to leave Illinois "as soon as grass grows and water runs." From Nauvoo, the Saints crossed Iowa. Their first real way-station was at Garden Grove, where 170 men cleared 715 acres in three weeks, for the purpose of providing shelter for those coming behind. In 1846, they crossed the Missouri River at Council Bluffs, setting up Winter Quarters on Indian lands, at what is now an Omaha suburb. While 3,483 Saints waited there for spring, more than 600 perished. As spring 1847 approached, approximately 10,000 Mormons were encamped along the trail in Iowa and at Winter Quarters. Brigham Young and the Council of the Twelve organized the Pioneer Company to go ahead to mark the trail and lay the cornerstone of the new Zion. The first group of Mormons passed through Echo Canyon, over Big Mountain and Little Mountain and down Emigration Canyon, coming into full view of the Great Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. During the period from 1846 to 1869, about 60,000 Mormon pioneers crossed the prairies. They came from existing American states and also from many European countries. THE NATCHEZ TRACE The Natchez Trace has a colorful history. By 1785, there were traders from the Ohio River Valley (called "Kaintucks") arriving in Natchez with flatboats and rafts filled with products and crops. But of course it wasn't possible to return upriver against the currents. Instead, they would walk or ride horses northward on the Trace to their homes. Often they were attacked and robbed of the riches so recently gained. The Trace gained the nickname "Devil's Backbone." You might be able to locate the book which relates to that name. It is by Jonathan Daniels, "The Devil's Backbone, the Story of the Natchez Trace." The U.S. never owned the public lands of Tennessee through which about 100 miles of the Trace ran. In Alabama, it went only 40 miles, touching only two counties. 300 miles of it lay in Mississippi. The coming of steamboat traffic spelled the end of the dominance of the Natchez Trace. Andrew Jackson made a lot of trips up and down the Trace. In 1813 when he walked it with his army, he acquired the name "Old Hickory" because his volunteers considered him as tough as the hickory trees around them. Another significant name connected to the Trace is that of Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The question still lingers--was his death on the Trace suicide or murder? THE NATIONAL ROAD The National Road was originally called the Cumberland Road because it started in Cumberland, Maryland. By 1825, it was referred to as the National Road because of its federal funding. The enabling act for admission of Ohio to the Union in 1803 contained provisions for construction of a road linking the East and West. Congress then passed "An Act to Regulate the Laying Out and Making a Road from Cumberland, in the State of Maryland, to the State of Ohio." In 1811, contracts were signed for construction of the first ten miles west of Cumberland. The road reached Wheeling in 1818. It entered Columbus in 1833, and Congress made its last appropriation for the road in 1838. During the 1830s, Congress had begun to turn the road over to the states for administration and maintenance. Construction was suspended in the early 1840s because of lack of congressional appropriations. Indiana completed its intrastate segment in 1850. The road then continued on to Vandalia, Illinois, but it did not continue on to Jefferson City, Missouri, as had been planned, the idea being that the road was to go through state capitals as it moved westward. The old National Road became part of U.S. 40 in 1926. THE OREGON TRAIL The Oregon Trail extended from the Missouri River to the Willamette River. It was used by nearly 400,000 people. The trail's starting points were Independence, Westport, St. Joseph, and Ft. Leavenworth. Alternate routes included Sublette's Cutoff and the Lander Cutoff. After 1846, there was also a choice at The Dalles between rafting down the Columbia River or taking the new Barlow Road across the Cascades. Each part of the journey had its set of unique difficulties. During the first third of the journey, emigrants got used to the routine and work of travel. Approaching the steep ascent to the Continental Divide, water, fuel, grass for the livestock, fresh meat, and food staples became scarce. The final third was the most difficult part of the trail. The major fears of the pioneers following the trail were Indians, disease, and the weather. THE PENNSYLVANIA ROAD The Great Conestoga Road, completed in 1741, and the later Lancaster Pike (opened in 1794) went from Philadelphia to Lancaster. After the Lancaster Pike was completed, the Pennsylvania Legislature granted charters to extend it westward to Pittsburgh, following closely the route of the Forbes Road. Faced with the need to build a road to move troops during the French and Indian War, General Forbes' troops constructed a road from Harrisburg to Ft. Duquesne which he renamed Fort Pitt, after his commanding general. Today, we know it as Pittsburgh. Years later, the Pennsylvania Legislature granted charters that extended the Lancaster Pike on westward to Pittsburgh, subsidizing this "Pennsylvania Road" by subscribing to stock in some of the companies. Migration moved westward through Fort Pitt as settlers trekked from eastern Pennsylvania and New England west to new lands and opportunities. The river-canal system which opened in 1834 between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh reduced traffic on Pennsylvania's turnpike. Heavy freight traffic diverted to the canals although stagecoach lines continued to prosper. 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. THE WILDERNESS ROAD The road through the Cumberland Gap was not officially named "the Wilderness Road" until 1796 when it was widened enough to allow Conestoga Wagons to travel on it. However, by the time Kentucky had become a state (1792), estimates are that 70,000 settlers had poured into the area through the Cumberland Gap, following this route. The Cumberland Gap was first called Cave Gap by the man who discovered it in 1750--Dr. Thomas Walker. Daniel Boone, whose name is always associated with the Gap, reached it in 1769, passing through it into the Blue Grass region, a hunting ground of Indian tribes. He returned in 1775 with about 30 woodsmen with rifles and axes to mark out a road through the Cumberland Gap, hired for the job by the Transylvania Company. Boone's men completed the blazing of this first trail through the Cumberland Mountains that same year, and established Boonesborough on the Kentucky River. The Wilderness Road connected to the Great Valley Road which came through the Shenandoah Valley from Pennsylvania. Some suggest the origin of the Wilderness Road was at Fort Chiswell (Ft. Chissel) on the Great Valley Road where roads converged from Philadelphia and Richmond. Others claimed the beginning of the road to be at Sapling Grove (today's Bristol, VA) which lay at the extreme southern end of the Great Valley Road since it was at that point that the road narrowed, forcing travelers to abandon their wagons. ZANE'S TRACE In 1796 Colonel Ebenezer Zane petitioned Congress to authorize him to build a road from Wheeling to Limestone (Maysville). Congress awarded him a contract to complete a path between Wheeling and Limestone by January 1, 1797. The contract required him to operate ferries across three rivers as soon as the path opened. His only compensation was to be three 640-acre tracts, one at each river crossing, to be surveyed at his own expense. Zane rounded up equipment and a crew of workmen; with axes, they cut trees and blazed a trail. At first, Zane's Trace was merely a narrow dark path through the forest, between a wall of ancient trees. Only horsemen could travel over it. For many years, it was not wide enough for wagons. In 1804 the Legislature appropriated about fifteen dollars a mile to make a new twenty-foot road over Zane's route. But by modern standards, it was still a poor road because they left tree stumps whenever they were under one foot high. The Trace was used by hundreds of flatboatmen returning on foot or horseback to Pittsburgh and upriver towns from downriver ports as far away as New Orleans. The road also became the mail route from Wheeling to Maysville, and eventually it went on to Lexington and Nashville. =============end===============