Long before English Colonists arrived in North America, the Indians traversed a hunting trail from the North to the South through the Appalachian Valley called the Great Warrior’s Path. Much of the trail followed the river they called the Shenandoah or “Daughter of the Stars”. After the French and Indian War in the1750s, and as Colonists expanded into new territory to the South from Pennsylvania, they essentially followed the same route, and it became known as the Great Wagon Road. Most of the German and Scotch-Irish settlers pushing out of Pennsylvania to find new lands followed this road southward as they could not easily scale the mountains to the West. It was by far the most heavily traveled route to the Burke frontier in North Carolina.
The road began at the Schuykill River Ferry in Philadelphia, and ran west to Lancaster, crossing the Susquehanna River at Harris’s Ferry and then crossing the Potomac River at Williams Ferry (Williamsport, MD). The road took settlers down through the Appalachian Valley (now called the Shenandoah Valley) essentially following Route 81 in present day Virginia. At the present location of Roanoke, the road veered eastward through a gap in the Blue Ridge Mountain and once again turned south essentially following Route 220 today, crossing the Dan River and on into North Carolina.