The Road that Made America

The Road That Made America: A Modern Pilgrim's Journey on the Great Wagon Road by James Dodson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a book of history, a travelogue, and a memoir, all mixed together into a very readable and super-informative story about early America.

"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 backcountry of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas." --flap copy

Dodson was an excellent companion for a modern-day journey along this historic route. His writing reminded me of John McPhee and John Gierach, which I really like. I learned a lot about the history of Pennsylvania and am inspired to check out the Pennsylvania Trails of History at some point.