THE GREAT WAGON ROAD From Philadelphia to the South by Parke Rouse, Jr.

The Great Wagon Road from Philadelphia to the South was first publishedd by McGraw Hill as part of its “Great American Trails” series, edited by A. B. Gutherie, Jr. It was instantly recognized for its insight into the birth of the American South from the early 1700’s until the Civil War. Historian Carl Bridenbaugh wrote that “In the last sixteen years of the colonial era, southbound traffic along the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road was numbered in tens of thousands; it was the most heavily travelled road in all America…” and Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson marked its route on their map of Virginia in 1754 as “the great Wagon Road from the Yadkin River through Virginia to Philadelphia distant 435 miles.”