Great Appalachian Valley - History

History

Routes through the valley were first used by Native Americans. In pre-colonial and early colonial times a major Indian pathway through the Great Valley was known as the Great Indian Warpath, Seneca Trail, and various other names.

For white immigrants the Great Valley was a major route for settlement and commerce in the United States along the Great Wagon Road, which began in Philadelphia. In the Shenandoah Valley the road was known as the Valley Pike. The Wilderness Road branched off from the Great Wagon Road at present-day Roanoke, Virginia, crossed the Cumberland Gap and led to Kentucky and Tennessee, especially the fertile Bluegrass region and Nashville Basin. Another branch at Roanoke, called the Carolina Road, led into the Piedmont regions of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

The various gaps connecting the Great Valley to lands to the east and west have played important roles in American history. On the east side, the wide gap in southeast Pennsylvania became the main route for colonization of the Great Valley. By the 1730s the Pennsylvanian Great Valley west of South Mountain was open to settlement after treaty cessions and purchases from the Indians. The region drew a steady and growing stream of immigrants and became known as "the best poor man's country". Before long immigrants had thoroughly settled the Great Valley in Pennsylvania and were rapidly migrating and settling southwards into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The entire region between southeast Pennsylvania and the Shenandoah Valley soon became famous as a "breadbasket", the most productive mixed farming region in America (Meinig, 1986:134). The road from Philadelphia west to the valley and then south through it became very heavily used and known variously as the Great Wagon Road, the Philadelphia Wagon Road, the Valley Road, etc. The Conestoga wagon was developed around 1725 in the area of the wide opening between Philadelphia and the Great Valley. The Conestoga wagon became the main vehicle for transportation through the Great Valley until the railroad era.

Culver Gap near Culver's Lake in Sussex County, New Jersey, was an important route through the Kittatinny Mountain from about 10,000 years ago to present. The Gap is more than 400 feet below the top of the mountain. Lenape Native Americans used the gap to hunt and trade on both sides of the mountain. Early settlers from Pennsylvania used the water drop from Culvers Lake to Branchville for a wide assortment of mills. Turnpikes followed the route of Lenape trails through the gap.

By the 1750s the Great Valley was well-settled to the southern end of Shenandoah Valley. Immigrants continued to travel from the Philadelphia area south through the Great Valley beyond Shenandoah, to the vicinity of the modern city of Roanoke, Virginia. There is a wide gap in the Blue Ridge near Roanoke. A branch of the Great Wagon Road began there, crossing through the gap east into the Piedmont region of North Carolina and South Carolina. This road became known as the Carolina Road. During the 1750s the stream of migrants traveling south through the valley and into the Carolina Piedmont grew into a flood. At the time, the Carolina Piedmont region offered some of the best land at the lowest prices. Soon a string of towns appeared, including Salisbury, Salem, and Charlotte in North Carolina. In the decades before the American Revolution the Piedmont "upcountry" of the Carolinas was quickly settled, mostly by recent immigrants who had migrated from the north to the south via the Great Valley. Many of these immigrants were Scots-Irish, Germans from the Rhineland-Palatinate area, and Moravians. This "upcountry" population soon surpassed the older and more established "lowcountry" population near the Atlantic coast, causing serious geopolitical tensions in the Carolinas during the late 18th century (Meinig, 1986: 291–293).

On the west side, the Cumberland Gap became the main route for migration west from the southern Great Valley to Kentucky and Tennessee. In the north, the Mohawk Valley became a major route for westward expansion, especially after the construction of the Erie Canal, which linked New York City to the Great Lakes region via the Hudson River of the Great Valley and the Mohawk Valley gap.

The Great Valley played an important role during the American Civil War, especially the Shenandoah Valley, its Blue Ridge gaps and nearby Piedmont area, and its northward extension to the vicinity of Gettysburg. Civil War era sites and events in this region include Harpers Ferry, Antietam, Manassas, Virginia, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, the Valley Campaign, the Valley Campaigns of 1864, the Battles of Chattanooga, and the Gettysburg Campaign.