Geography & Mapping, United States - History - General & Miscellaneous

Eastern Trails: From Footpaths to Turnpikes

Name: Eastern Trails: From Footpaths to Turnpikes
Author: Kathy Pelta
ISBN: 9780817240714

by Kathy Pelta

Write a review

Overview

This four-volume series describes the trials and tribulations that Europeans and then Americans both white and black experienced in their forages into the North American continent first from the southern areas of Mexico and Florida, then from the East Coast to the Mississippi and from the Texas region north to the rail lines, and finally from the Mississippi to the Pacific. The sage of the trailblazers and those that followed to settle the areas inhabited by the Native Americans is the story of the exploration of America and the gradual development of the United States from coast to coast.

This book emphasizes the importance of the Europeans' "water trails" and the overland paths of Native Americans in the formation of the eastern trails in the 1600s; until by 1840, European settlers in the east had a network of roads that pushed the frontier of the United States from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Post roads, battle trails, freight roads, toll roads, turnpikes, and national roads all play their parts in this saga.

Traces the building of roads in the eastern part of the United States from the time of the earliest colonists to the 1850s.