| Personal Name |
Dodson, James, author.
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| Title Statement |
The road that made America : a modern pilgrim's journey on the Great Wagon Road / James Dodson.
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| Edition Statement |
First Avid Reader Press hardcover edition.
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| Production, Publication, Distribution, Manufacture, and Copyright Notice |
New York : Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC, 2025.
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| Physical Description |
xi, 396 pages : map ; 24 cm
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| Content Type |
text rdacontent
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| Media Type |
unmediated rdamedia
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| Carrier Type |
volume rdacarrier
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| Bibliography, Etc. Note |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 391-396).
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| Summary, Etc. |
"Little known today, the Great Wagon Road was the primary road of frontier America: a mass migration route that stretched more than eight hundred miles from Philadelphia to Augusta, Georgia. It opened the Southern frontier and wilderness east of the Appalachian Mountains to America's first settlers, and later served as the gateway for the exploration of the American West. In the mid-1700s, waves of European colonists in search of land for new homes left Pennsylvania to settle in the colonial backcountry of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. More than one hundred thousand settlers made the arduous trek, those who would become the foundational generations of the world's first true immigrant nation. In their newly formed village squares, democracy took root and bloomed. During the Revolutionary War, the road served as the key supply line to the American resistance in the western areas of the colonies, especially in the South. Drawing on years of fieldwork and scholarship by an army of archeologists, academics, archivists, preservationists, and passionate history lovers, James Dodson sets out to follow the road's original path from Philadelphia to Georgia. On his journey, he crosses six contiguous states and some of the most historic and hallowed landscapes of eastern America, touching many of the nation's most sacred battlefields and burying grounds. Due to its strategic importance, military engagements were staged along the Great Wagon Road throughout North America's three major wars, including the early days of the bloody French and Indian conflict and pivotal Revolutionary War encounters. In time, the Great Wagon Road became America's first technology highway, as growing roadside villages and towns and cities became, in effect, the first incubators of America's early Industrial age. The people and ideas that traveled down the road shaped the character of the fledgling nation and helped define who we are today. Dodson's ancestors on both sides took the Great Wagon Road to Maryland and North Carolina, respectively, giving him a personal stake in uncovering the road's buried legacy. An illuminating and entertaining first-person history, The Road That Made America restores this long-forgotten route to its rightful place in our national story"-- Provided by publisher.
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| Subject-Personal Name |
Dodson, James
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Roads History. East (U.S.)
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| Subject Added Entry - Geographical Term |
United States History Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.
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| Subject Added Entry - Geographical Term |
United States History Revolution, 1775-1783.
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| Subject Added Entry - Geographical Term |
Great Philadelphia Wagon Road History.
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