At the conference between the Governors of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, on the one hand, and the Indians of the Five Nations on the other hand, which was held outside Albany in 1722, the Indians agreed to stay on the west side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. There was no provision which limited the Europeans to the east side of the Mountains so that, for a period of years, both groups were in the Shenandoah Valley. At another major conference held at Lancaster, PA in 1744, the right of the Europeans to use the trails on the west side of the Blue Ridge was reaffirmed. At this time, the route on the west side was known as the Great Warrior's Path. In the famous map of Peter Jefferson and Joshua Fry, printed in England in 1754, the map showed the "Indian Road by the Treaty of Lancaster."
By the time the 1775 edition of the map was issued, this Appalachian pathway was labeled "The Great Wagon Road from the Yadkin River through Virginia to Philadelphia distance 435 miles." From the Yadkin River, several other routes extend the total length. The growth of the Moravian settlement of Wachovia after 1753 increased travel from Virginia into that region. This led to the establishment of Rowan County in North Carolina 1753. The Governor of NC could write in 1755 that Salisbury, the county seat of Rowan, is but just laid out, with a courthouse and seven or eight log houses erected.
Growth and development were not instantaneous. Needs were met in a variety of ways. Some enterprising citizens established ferries. In 1744, Virginia ordered that a ferry be maintained across the Potomac (the site is now Williamsport, Maryland). The first ferries were of limited capacities, later expanded so that wagons could be carried.
Year after year, along this narrow-rutted inter-colonial thoroughfare, there was a procession of horsemen, footmen, and pioneer families with horses, wagons, and cattle. The rumble of wagon wheels in the 1750's and 1760's mounted along the Wagon Road. In the last sixteen years of the colonial area, southbound traffic along the Great Wagon Road was numbered in the tens of thousands. It was the most heavily traveled road in all America and had perhaps more traffic than all of the other main roads together.
A point to be made here is that when the first of our Germanna ancestors moved south in the eighteenth century, conditions along the road were still very primitive and the development in the western areas of the southern states was very limited. It was almost like starting over again at Germantown or at the Robinson River.
P.S. When Alexander Spotswood went to the Indian conference at Albany, New York in 1722, he went by the ship H.M.S. Enterprise. It was easier to go by water than it was by land.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.