Chapter XIV: Cities of the Southern Mountains

In the old days it took the traveler weeks to go from Pennsylvania or the Potomac river to the valley of east Tennessee. He might camp in the woods, living on the few provisions he could carry and on what he could shoot in the forest, or he might share the humble homes of chance settlers on the way.

Now he enters a vestibuled train and is rolled over a smooth iron road along the streams and between the mountains. Starting one day, he will find when he wakes the next morning that the sun is rising over the Great Smokies, while around him are the rich rolling fields that border the Tennessee river.

If the traveler wishes to see the land and learn what men have done in a hundred years, he will leave the train at Knoxville. A carriage or an electric car will carry him between blocks of fine buildings to a modern hotel, where he will find food and bed and places to read, write, rest, or do business, as he likes. Around him is a busy city stretching up and down its many hills. Before long he will wander down to the banks of the Tennessee river and see the boats tied at the wharf, or he will cross the great bridge to the hills beyond and look back over the city.

On those hilltops are pits dug in the woods, and some veteran of the Union or the Confederate army will tell him that these are ammunition pits. The old soldier will point across to where Fort Sanders stood, and will describe those days in 1863 when Longstreet came up and laid siege to the town, which was garrisoned by Burnside and his army.

Our traveler need do little more than cross the great bridge at Knoxville to find quarries of marble; and if he goes up and down for a few miles, he will see rich deposits of this stone. It is prized because it shows many colors,--cream, yellow, brown, red, pink, and blue. The colors often run into each other in curious and fantastic ways, and the slabs and blocks when polished are beautiful indeed. These marbles have been used to adorn some of the finest buildings in America, including the National Capitol.

Around Knoxville are fine farms also, just as we find them about Harrisburg, Hagerstown, Winchester, and almost everywhere else in the Great Valley. Our view (Fig. 52) is taken near Knoxville and shows sloping fields always ready to bear good crops. The soils have been made by the wasting of the top parts of these same beds of marble and of other rocks found along with it.

In Knoxville, on the edge of the city, is the University of Tennessee, with many buildings upon its campus. It is an excellent school and an old one as well, having been founded in 1794. It was first named Blount College, from one of the prominent public men of the valley at that time, and is now one of the foremost schools of the South.

Only seven years before that date two old Revolutionary soldiers rode through the woods and picked out these lands, which were given to them as a reward for their service in the war. Here they built as a defense against the savages a wooden fort, with log cabins at the corners and a stockade with a stout barred gate. Such a fort was greatly needed in those days whenever a new settlement was made. After the two soldiers had planted corn they went back to North Carolina to bring their families over the mountains. This was the beginning of Knoxville, which grew up around the fort and soon spread over the hills and down to the river. The settlement was named in honor of Henry Knox, who was an able general in the Revolution and a good friend of George Washington.

Now the railroads reach out in every direction. They bring in the iron ore and the limestones of the valley. They also run up into the Cumberland Gap, and to Harriman, Tennessee, and bring back stores of coal, thus making Knoxville a place for working iron. To the east the Southern Railroad leads up the French Broad (Fig. 61) through deep gorges into the heart of the Great Smokies at Asheville, and across the Blue Ridge to the lowlands of North Carolina.

All this is very different from the samp mortars and the puncheon floors of early times, but the pioneers had a keen eye for the soil and the waters and the trees, and it is these which have helped to make the valley rich to-day.

We must not forget that off to the west James Robertson had founded a city that is even older than Knoxville. In the great bend of the Cumberland, on its south bank, in northern Tennessee, stands Nashville, as we have already seen.

If we visit a large city in one of the countries of Europe, we are quite likely to be told, or to read in our guidebook, that its history goes back hundreds of years, and any town that was started only a hundred years ago would there seem young. But we measure age differently in America, and a town like Nashville, founded in 1780, we think is old indeed. It is not easy to remember, as we ride along the streets and see the shops and mansions of Nashville to-day, that this was once a place of log cabins, and that the first settlers had to sleep always with one ear open for the Indian’s war cry.

That James Robertson had to learn to read from his wife did not keep Nashville from becoming one of the centers of education and refinement in the South. It would take several lines to record the names of all the colleges and universities that now have their seat in this city. Robertson was the sort of man who, with the opportunities of to-day, might have been the president of one of these schools, or he might perhaps have gained a fortune with which to help in their support. Farther west, on the Mississippi river, stands Memphis, a city still larger than Nashville; indeed, few southern states can boast of so many cities as Tennessee possesses. Besides these, there are fertile valleys, fine rivers and mountains, productive forests, beds of iron ore and coal, comfortable farms, and thriving towns. The state is rich, too, in historical associations. Every part of Tennessee saw the dark days of the Civil War, and in the fields south of Nashville a great battle was fought.

When John Sevier went down the Tennessee river on his Indian raids he noticed that the stream, making a great bend, turns away from the valley and flows by a deep gorge through the highlands of the Cumberland plateau. We can take the train now at Knoxville, and a ride of a little more than a hundred miles will bring us to this place.

By the river is a steep, high ground known as Cameron hill. Let us go up to the top and look around. Stretching away at our feet on the east is Chattanooga. Part of the city as we see it from Cameron hill is shown in the picture (Fig. 70). Beyond is the Tennessee, and we are looking up the river to the northeast. The bridge which we see is the only bridge across the river at Chattanooga, even though it is now a large and busy city. In the distance is high ground, a part of Missionary Ridge, famous in the story of the Civil War.

If we turn around and look southward, we shall see Lookout Mountain, rising fifteen hundred feet above the river. A battle was fought on the steep slopes of this mountain also; and a few miles to the southeast is Chickamauga, one of the bloodiest battle grounds of the war. On the edge of the city, kept with care, is the National Cemetery, where rest the bodies of more than twelve thousand soldiers, northern and southern, who perished in the neighborhood of Chattanooga. Now all the region is peaceful, and only the tablets of iron and bronze, set up by the government on every battlefield in the neighborhood, tell the story of the conflict as it raged about the city.

Like Knoxville, Chattanooga has much coal and iron, is the center of a number of railways, and does much business. The railways run up the valley to Virginia, and south to Atlanta and elsewhere in Georgia. They stretch even further southward to Mobile and New Orleans, while the lines to the west reach Memphis and Nashville. Chattanooga is sometimes called the “Gate City” because it stands near the opening of the Great Valley into the wide plains along the gulf of Mexico. The place, originally called Ross’s Landing, was not settled until 1836, when Knoxville and Nashville were about fifty years old. It has a noble site and may well become a great city.

Here passed the boats that bore the first settlers to Robertson’s colony on the Cumberland. There are no Indians now to shoot from the banks, and you will see on the river only rafts of logs floating down from the forests in the mountains.

Atlanta also is often called the “Gate City” of the South. It stands more than a thousand feet above the sea, in northern Georgia, where the Appalachian mountain range is tapering down toward the southern plains. Because Atlanta is so high it is cooler in summer than most southern cities, and is always free from the scourge of yellow fever and cholera.

It is a natural site for a city, for here at the end of the great mountain system the long lines of railway that follow the Atlantic coast swing around to the west, passing on to the Mississippi and down to Mobile and the ports on the gulf of Mexico. Other railways reach Atlanta from Chattanooga and Knoxville in the Great Valley, and still others lead the way to Savannah and the Atlantic coast. Thus twelve lines of railway reach out from Atlanta like the spokes of a wheel and connect the city with all parts of the South. Let us take a map of the United States and draw a line through Richmond, Louisville, Nashville, and New Orleans. Notice how many states lie southeast of this line, and remember that of all the towns which they contain Atlanta is the largest and most important. Indeed, in trade and influence it surpasses many northern cities which are much larger.

Atlanta saw stirring times in the Civil War. It was small then, having but about ten thousand people. In 1864 most of it was burned to the ground, and we may truly say that it has grown to its present size in the short period since that time. To-day its population numbers more than one hundred thousand. During the recent Spanish War the Department of the Gulf made its headquarters here, so that Atlanta appears to be sought both in war and in peace. The city was used as the capital of Georgia soon after the Civil War, and in 1877 the people of the state voted that it should always be the seat of government. Since that time they have erected a capitol costing a million dollars, adorning the interior with marbles from their own quarries.

A few years ago an exposition was held at Atlanta to show the world the achievements and hopes of the great South. Everybody knew that the South raised cotton, but Atlanta wished to prove that the South could also spin and weave her famous product. Mr. W. G. Atkinson was the governor of Georgia at that time. During the exposition a day was chosen in which something unusual should be done. Men went out into a field in the morning and picked some cotton. It was ginned and spun and woven in double-quick time. Then tailors took some of the cloth, cut it, fitted it, and sewed it into a suit of clothes. Governor Atkinson put on the suit and visited the grounds of the exposition. In the morning the cotton was in the field, in the evening it was on the governor. Suits are not made so quickly as that on ordinary days, but the South spins and weaves millions of dollars’ worth of cotton, turning the mill wheels with southern coal or with the waters of swift southern streams.

Atlanta is not only at the southern end of the mountains, but it is on the divide which separates the streams of the gulf from those of the Atlantic. On the one hand, not far away, is the Ocmulgee, flowing to the ocean, while westward, and distant but a few miles, the Chattahoochee flows toward the gulf. The latter river has been harnessed by man, and eleven thousand horse power measures the amount of energy that can be carried over the wires to Atlanta to move its cars and turn the wheels of its factories. The mills not only spin the cotton of the gulf plains but also turn out fertilizers, work up the timber of the region, and make a multitude of other things to swell the city’s trade with her neighbors.

Appropriate to her needs, Atlanta has had since 1887 a school of technology, in which she teaches her sons how to develop the great resources of the South. Here are shops and departments of engineering, and, not least, instruction in making textiles, so that the cotton of southern fields need no longer go to Massachusetts or to England to be spun and woven.

The youngest great town of the southern mountain region was started on an old cotton plantation in 1871, thirty-four years before the writing of these lines. The people knew that in Alabama as well as in Tennessee coal and iron are found close together. So men built an iron town and called it, after one of the greatest furnace towns in the world, Birmingham. It is a noisy, busy place, with wide streets, swift electric cars, and blazing furnaces. To see it grow is like watching a new Pittsburg rise up in the heart of the South.

From the Berkshire country at the north to the southern end of the Appalachians, there are to-day thriving towns and fertile fields. No longer does the mountain wall cut off the products of the West from the markets of the East. Yet hardly a hundred years ago the eastern strip of country was practically shut off from the whole territory drained by the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Indian trails and rough roads were the only means of communication between the two sections. Great as are the natural resources of both regions, their prosperity has been bound up in the development of roads and railways, and is due in large measure to the energy, foresight, and self-sacrifice of those who crossed the barrier and made it easy for others to follow them.

INDEX

Adams, Charles Francis, cited, 7

Adams, John Quincy, 100

Adirondacks, 32

Albany, N.Y., 6, 10, 15, 16

Alexander, Mt., 130

Alexandria, Va., 41, 86

Allegheny Front, 74, 78, 80, 82

Allegheny Portage Railway, 75, 76, 80

Allegheny river, 111

Allentown, Pa., 79

Altoona, Pa., 77;
description of, 81

Amsterdam, N.Y., 20

Ann, Fort, 32

Annapolis, Md., 88

Antietam, 132

Appalachians, southern, 174

“Arks” on the Susquehanna, 41

Arnold, Benedict, 37

Atkinson, Gov. W. G., 178

Atlanta, Ga., 174–180

Auburn, N.Y., 57

Bald Eagle valley, 80

Baltimore, Md., 53, 86, 101;
growth of, 107

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 99, 101, 102, 110

Barges on the Ohio, 116, 118

Barton, Clara, cited, 82

Bay Road, Mass., 4

Bedford, Pa., 71, 77

Bemis Heights, 38

Bennington, Vt., 38

Berkshires, 5;
railway through, 9, 10

Bethlehem, Pa., 79

Binghamton, N.Y., 52

Birmingham, Ala., 181

Black Rock (Buffalo), 47

“Blackbeard,” 130

Blockhouse at Pittsburg, 112

Blount College, 170

Blue Grass country, 127, 151, 166

Blue mountain, 79

Blue Ridge mountains, 88, 130

Boone, Daniel, early life, 144;
training, 145;
portrait, 145;
moves to North Carolina, 146;
serves with Braddock, 146;
camps in Kentucky, 147;
visits Cumberland Gap, 148;
founds Boonesborough, 148;
buys lands of the Indians, 149;
marks out the Wilderness road, 149

Boonesborough, 148

Boston, Mass., 1, 2, 7, 12

Braddock, General, 69, 90, 91, 146

Braddock, Pa., 83

Brant, Joseph, 33

Bristol, Tenn., 134

British, in New York, 32;
in the Ohio country, 156

Brownsville, Pa., 93, 117

Buffalo, 52, 57, 60, 110;
growth of, 61

Burgoyne, General, 32, 37

Burnside, General, 168

Business, increase of, 114, 118

Cambria Steel Company, 83

Cameron hill, 173

Campbell, William and Arthur, 160

Canajoharie, N.Y., 24

Canals, 44;
Erie, 7, 46, 48, 50–52;
Pennsylvania, 74;
Chesapeake and Ohio, 98–101, 107;
Delaware and Hudson, 53;
at Louisville, Ky., 127

Carlisle, Pa., 71, 79, 132

Carroll, Charles, 101

Carry to Schenectady, the, 19, 22

_Catch-me-if-you-can_, 2

Catskill mountains, 15, 32

Chambersburg, Pa., 71, 132

Champlain, lake, 31, 37

Charlottesville, Va., 142

Chattahoochee river, 179

Chattanooga, Tenn., 135;
description of, 173–175

Cherokee Indians, 139, 149

Chesapeake bay, 86

Chesapeake and Ohio canal, 107;
building of, 98–101

Chicago, 110

Chickamauga, 174

Chissel, Fort, 135

Cincinnati, Ohio, description of, 123–127

Clark, George Rogers, raises an army, 156;
portrait, 157;
captures Kaskaskia and Vincennes, 158

Clay, Henry, stories of, 96, 114

Cleveland, Benjamin, 160

Clinch river, 134

Clinton, De Witt, 44, 49;
stirs up legislature, 40;
portrait, 43;
train, 53, 54

Coal, 104, 118, 122, 153, 170, 181

Cohoes, N.Y., 22

Coke ovens, 108

_Columbia, The_, 2

Columbia, Pa., 69, 74, 76

Columbus, Ohio, 94

Conemaugh river, 75, 82

Conestoga creek, 67

Conestoga Traction Company, 70

Conestoga wagons, 77

Connecticut river, 4

Construction, early railway, 105

Cooper, Peter, 106

Cornstalk, 155

Cornwallis, Lord, 158

Cotton, 178

Cumberland, Fort, 89, 90;
city of, 93, 95, 102

Cumberland Gap, 142, 148, 150, 152

Cumberland mountains, 134, 142

Cumberland river, 164, 174

Cumberland road, 93

Cunard, Samuel, 2

Cunard line, 2, 8

Dams, use of, 119

Danforth, Mr., and salt making, 27

Deerfield valley, 8

Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, 53

Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, 60

De-o-wain-sta, 23

Detroit, 41, 156

Dickens, Charles, 126

Dinwiddie, Governor, 89

Doak, Rev. Samuel, 160

Dongan, Gov. Thomas, 40

Dunlap’s creek, 96

Dunmore, Lord, 155

Duquesne, Fort, 91

Dutch, in New York, 14, 18, 31

Earle, Mrs. Alice Morse, cited, 55

Easton, Pa., 79

Edward, Fort, 31

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, cited, 1

Empire State Express, 56

England, interest of, in fur trade, 18;
railways of, 55

Erie canal, 7, 42, 46, 48, 50–52

Erie, lake, 18, 42, 98

Erie Railroad, 60

Euphrates river, 130

Fairfax, Lord William, 88

Falls of the Ohio, 127, 146, 152

Farms in Pennsylvania, 66

“Feeders” of Erie canal, 52

Ferguson, Patrick, 159

Finley, John, 146, 148

Fishing interests, 104

Flag, perhaps the first American, 34

Flatboats, 117

Floyd, Gen. William, 22

Forbes’s road, 71

Forts:
Orange, 17;
Stanwix, 22, 23, 34, 37, 61, 149;
Schuyler, 23;
Johnson, 26;
Edward, 31;
Ann, 32;
Ticonderoga, 32, 37, 38;
Cumberland, 89, 90;
Duquesne, 91;
Chissel, 135;
Sanders, 168

Franklin, Benjamin, 4, 69, 130

“Franklin,” state of, 166

Frederick, Md., 93

French, in Ohio country, 89

French and Indian War, 69

French Broad river, 135, 159, 170

Frostburg, Md., 90, 93

Fur trade, 18, 24, 40

Furnaces near Pittsburg, 121

Gansevoort, Col. Peter, 34

Gas, natural, 120

“Gate City,” the, 174

Genesee road, 24, 25

Genesee street, Utica, 23

Geneva, 24, 25

George, Mt., 130

Georgetown, D.C., 100

Georgia Institute of Technology, 179

Germans in Pennsylvania, 66;
in Tennessee, 136

Ginseng, 24

Gist, Christopher, 89

Glass mills, 122

Gray, Captain, 2

Great Kanawha river, 155

Great Smoky mountains, 134, 170

Great Valley, the, 71, 130, 132, 134, 136, 139

_Gulliver’s Travels_, 150

Gypsum, 104

Hagerstown, Md., 25, 132, 165

_Half Moon_, the, 15

Halifax, 2

Hambright’s Hotel, 70

Hamburg-American line, 108

Hamilton, Col. Henry, 156

Hancock, Gov. John, 2

Hanks, Abraham, 149

Harlem, 14

Harpers Ferry, 107, 130, 132

Harriman, Tenn., 170

Harrisburg, Pa., 74, 85, 132;
description of, 78

Henry, Patrick, 156

Herkimer, Nicholas, 29, 33, 35, 36

Hessians, 33, 38

Hill, Gen. A. P., 142

_Hit or Miss_, the, 77

Hiwassee river, 135

Hollidaysburg, Pa., 74

Holston river, 134

Honesdale, Pa., 53

Hoosac mountain, 5, 8

Hoosac tunnel, 9–11

Hoosick river, 5

Housatonic river, 5

Howe, General, 32

Hudson, Henry, 15, 16

Hudson river, 15

Huguenots, 136

Hulbert, cited, 105

Illinois, 158

Indiana, 158

Indians, 144, 149, 163, 164;
in New York, 14, 17, 18, 33;
at Watauga, 138;
at Point Pleasant, 155

Indies, hope of reaching, 15

Iron works, 121, 129, 170, 180

Iroquois Indians, 18

Jackson, “Stonewall,” 133

James river, 133;
gap, 134

Jefferson, Thomas, 156

Johns Hopkins University, 108

Johnson, Fort, 26

Johnson, John, 36

Johnson, Sir William, 20

Johnstown, N.Y., 20

Johnstown, Pa., 75, 76, 82

Joppa, 92

Juniata river, 74

Kaskaskia, Ill., 116, 157

Kentucky, 127, 154, 164;
becomes a state, 165

Kings Mountain, 158, 160

Knights, Sarah, 4

Knox, Gen. Henry, 170

Knoxville, 134, 166, 170

Lake Shore Railroad, 110

Lancaster, Pa., 65, 72, 78

Lancaster pike, 65, 67, 70

Lee, Arthur, 113

Lee, Richard Henry, 98

Lee, Gen. Robert E., 132

Legislators allowed boat hire, 87

Lewis, Andrew, 155

Licking river, 124

Limestones, 104, 132, 151, 169

Lincoln, Abraham, 117, 149

Little Falls, N.Y., 22, 42

Little Tennessee river, 135

Liverpool, 110

Locks, 45

Logan, 155

London, 110

Long House, the, 18

Longstreet, General, 168

Lookout Mountain, 173

Losantiville, 124

Louisville, 117, 127

Lulbegrud creek, 151

Luray, 131, 132

Lyell, Sir Charles, cited, 126

McClellan, General, 132

Mail, first, received at Utica, 24

Mail bags, race of the, 109

Mail coaches, 94

Manhattan island, 14, 15

Marble, 104, 168, 171

Maryland, 86

Memphis, 172

Middlesboro, 153

Milestone on Braddock’s road, 90

Missionary Ridge, 173

Mobile, 174

Mohawk valley, 16–19, 31, 42, 59

Monongahela river, 93, 96, 111

Morris, Gouverneur, 42

Mount Vernon, 41, 86

Nash, Oliver, 163

Nashborough (Nashville), 163, 171, 173

National Road, the, 91, 93, 96, 123

New Amsterdam, 14

New Jersey, Scotch-Irish in, 66

New Netherlands, 14

New river (Great Kanawha), 134

New York Central Railway, 20, 30, 58, 60, 62

New York City, 2, 7, 14

New York state, 27;
well adapted for canal, 44

Newburg, N.Y., 60

_Noah’s Ark_, 49

Nolichucky river, 159

Norfolk and Western Railway, 133

North Adams, Mass., 5

_North American Review_, 102

North Carolina, 137, 146

North-German Lloyd line, 108

Ocmulgee river, 179

Ogden, Utah, 109

Ohio Company, 88

Ohio country, French in, 89

Ohio river, 76, 98, 111, 123, 127, 152

Oil City, 120

Omaha, 109

Oneida Indians, 17

Oneida Carrying Place, 22

Onondaga salt, 27, 113

Ontario, lake, 18, 22, 33

Oriskany, 29, 30, 35

Oswego, 32

Oswego river, 22

Otsego lake, 98

Oyster industry, 104

“Packers,” 72

Packets, 50

Parton, James, cited, 120

Penn, William, 66

Pennsylvania, settlement of, 66

Pennsylvania Railroad, 77–85

“Pennsylvania Dutch,” 66

Pennsylvania canal, 74

Phelps, Abner, 9

Philadelphia, 41, 63

Pike, Pittsburg, 72;
Frederick, 93

Pineville gap, 143, 147

Pittsburg, 64, 71, 75, 83, 107, 156;
description of, 111, 115, 120, 122;
pike, 72

Pittsfield, Mass., 5

Point Pleasant, 155

Portage Railway, Allegheny, 75, 76, 80

Post, John, 23, 24

Potomac Company, 99

Potomac river, 86, 106

Powell, Ambrose, 142

Powell’s river, 134, 142

Prairies in Kentucky, 152

Princeton College, 66

Providence, R.I., 4

Puncheon floors, 140

Queen City, the, 124

Queenstown, 110

Quincy, Mass., 53

Railways:
through the Berkshires, 9, 10;
from Albany to Schenectady, 9, 53;
early, 53, 56;
opposition to, 55;
growth of, 60, 109, 181;
West Shore, 59;
Erie, 60;
New York Central, 20, 30, 58, 60, 62;
Wabash, 102;
Baltimore and Ohio, 99, 101, 102, 110;
Southern Pacific, 109;
Union Pacific, 109;
Lake Shore, 110;
Norfolk and Western, 133;
Southern, 134, 170

Reading, Pa., 79

Red Star line, 108

Redstone, 117

Richardson, Judge John, 46

Rivers important in a country’s growth, 5–7, 16, 17, 24, 26, 31, 41,
122, 126, 133

Roads, in New England, 4, 6, 7;
stage, 64;
development of, 72;
indifference to, 87;
national interest in, 92;
Braddock’s, 90;
Cumberland, 93;
Frederick, 93;
National, 91, 93, 96;
Wilderness (Boone’s trail, Kentucky road, Virginia road, Caintuck
Hog road), 127, 149

Roanoke, 134

Robertson, James, goes to Watauga, 137;
pacifies the Indians, 139;
helps protect the new settlement, 155;
founds Nashborough, 163;
trusted by the people, 164;
portrait, 164;
ability, 172

Rochester, N.Y., 25, 52

Rochester, Colonel, 26, 41, 61, 132

“Rolling roads,” 88

Rome, 22, 46, 61

Roosevelt, Theodore, cited, 137, 140, 160

Ross’s Landing, 174

Sails on cars, 105

St. Clair, General, 124

St. Leger, General, 33, 61

Salt, 27, 61, 113

Samp mortars, 21

San Francisco, 109

Saratoga, 38

Schenectady, 19, 42, 47, 61

“Schonowe,” 19

Schuyler, Fort (Utica), 23

Schuyler, Han Yost, 37

Schuylerville, 38

Scotch-Irish, 66, 136

Seneca river, 24

Seneca lake, 25

Settlement:
in New England, 4;
in New York, 14, 24;
in Pennsylvania, 66;
in the Ohio country, 117;
in Tennessee, 135, 170;
in Kentucky, 148

Sevier, John, goes to Watauga, 138;
fights on the frontier, 155;
plans to attack Ferguson, 160;
returns home, 162;
portrait, 162;
monument to, 165;
other honors, 166;
on the Tennessee river, 172

Shelby, Isaac, 155, 159, 165

Shelbyville, 165

Shenandoah valley, 88, 107, 130, 132

Sheridan, 133

Shippensburg, Pa., 71

Shreve, Captain, 117

Slate, 104

“Smoky City, The,” 120

South Mountain, Pa., 132

Southern Pacific Railway, 22

Southern Railway, 134, 170

Speed of early trains, 105

Spotswood, Alexander, 129

Springfield, Mass., 6, 10

Stanwix, Fort, 22, 23, 34, 37, 61, 149

Stark, General, 38

Staunton, Va., 135

Steamboats, 118

Stephenson, George, 53

Stillwater, 38

Susquehanna valley, 26, 41, 46, 104

Swift Run Gap, 130

Sycamore Shoals, 160

Sydney, Australia, 109

Syracuse, 27, 52, 57, 61

Tarleton, Colonel, 159

Teamsters of early days, 64, 69

Tennessee, 134, 154, 164, 172;
University of, 170

Tennessee river, 134, 142, 163, 167, 172, 174

Ticonderoga, 32, 37, 38

Tidewater country, 87, 130

Timber, 104, 180

Toll houses, 68, 87

Toll rates, 94

_Tom Thumb_, 106

Trails, old, 4, 6, 17, 19, 22, 25, 28, 72

Tramways in England, 54

Transylvania Company, 148

Travel, early, 5, 22, 56, 64, 91

Trow Plat, 23

Trunk line, 57

“Tubal Cain of Virginia,” 129

Tudor, Frederick, 4

Twentieth Century Limited, 56

Union Pacific Railroad, 109

University of Tennessee, 170

Utica, 21, 23, 37, 57, 61

Valley of east Tennessee, 135;
of Virginia, 132

Valley, the Great, 71, 130, 132, 134, 136, 139

Valleys as natural roads, 5–7, 16, 17, 22, 24, 26, 31, 41, 126, 133,
142, 152, 156

Van Curler, Arent, 17, 19, 57, 61

Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 58

_Ventura_, the, 109

Vincennes, Ind., 158

Virginia, 129, 154;
valley of, 132

Wabash Railway Company, 102

Wabash river, 158

Walker, Dr. Thomas, 142

Ward, Nancy, 139

Washington, D.C., 91, 93, 94

Washington, George, 41, 60, 86, 112, 133;
part taken by, in road making, 88–92, 98

Washington, Lawrence, 89

Watauga Settlement, 135–141, 144, 146, 159

Waterford, 47

West, the, 40, 60

Westfield valley, 6

West Shore Railway, 59

Wheeling, 94, 107, 122

White, Hugh, 21

Whitesboro, 21

Wilderness Road, 127, 149

Willett, Captain Marinus, 35

William and Mary College, 142

Wills creek, 89, 102

Wills mountain, 93

Winchester, Va., 132, 135

Windmills, Dutch, 15

Wood creek, 22, 42

Yadkin valley, North Carolina, 146

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to the corresponding illustrations.

Portions of the captions of some illustrations were taken from the List of Illustrations.

The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.

Page 18: The pronunciation mark above the first “o” in “ĭr-ṓ-kwoi´” was an inverted “T”, which was only visually approximated here.