HISTORIC AMERICAN HIGHWAYS^ — ROSE 503 



Atlantic seaboard. The general movement of travel was in a north- 

 and-south direction. Then, just before the Revolutionary War when 

 there was widespread unrest because of the congestion of population 

 and the burden of illegal taxes, the courageous pioneer Daniel Boone 

 began the westward emigration into the unknown country beyond 

 the Allegheny Mountains. He led his followers through the Cum- 

 berland Gap (pi. 4, fig. 1) and over the blazed trail now known as 

 Boone's Wilderness Road. 



Prior to the War of the American Revolution travel throughout the 

 Colonies was accomplished principally on foot or horseback, and the 

 average rate of travel did not exceed 4 miles an hour. Improvement 

 in the means and methods of transportation was retarded by the 

 chaotic social and economic conditions which were a natural aftermath 

 of the war. It was not until 1795 that organized road improvement 

 may be said to have begun. In that year a privately owned turnpike 

 company finished the first extensive broken-stone roadway in this 

 country. This was the 6214-mile Lancaster Turnpike leading west- 

 ward from Philadelphia (pi. 4, fig. 2). Weary and hungry travelers 

 were entertained by the hospitable host at the Eagle Tavern standing 

 beside the road about 14 miles from the City of Brotherly Love. The 

 improved stage wagons in use at this time, averaging 5 to 7 miles an 

 hour, represented the next step in the development of this type of 

 vehicle from the primitive covered box wagon to the later Concord 

 coach. 



With the Lancaster Pike as a beginning, stone-surfaced roads grew 

 in number and extent east of the Appalachian Mountains. It was 

 not until work was started on the National Pike, in 1806, that the 

 western transmountain settlers were given hope of relief from their 

 isolation. The new States of Kentucky and Tennessee, with their 

 commercial connection with the East restricted to the long rough 

 wagon road through the wilderness across the Appalachian divide, 

 sought a southwestern water outlet by way of the Mississippi River. 

 Flatboatmen who made the successful journey downstream sold their 

 products at New Orleans and returned home by the short cut through 

 the woods beginning at Natchez, the farthest southern town on the 

 hard ground bordering the swampy region below. Travel over this 

 forest path grew to such proportions that shortly before the Louisiana 

 Purchase was consummated, in 1803, the Congress of the United 

 States ordered the formal opening of this so-called Natchez Trace 

 leading northeasterly to Nashville, in Tennessee, for a distance of 

 less than 500 miles. On this beaten path or trace, through the leaf- 

 mold in the woods, Gov. Meriwether Lewis of Louisiana Terri- 

 tory lost his life on the night of October 11, 1809, at Griner's Tavern 

 (pi. 5, fig. 1) situated in Tennessee about 72 miles south of Nashville. 



