CHAPTER I
THE OLD NORTHWESTERN TURNPIKE
WE have treated of three historic highways in this series of monographs which found a way through the Appalachian uplift into the Mississippi Basin—Braddock's, Forbes's, and Boone's roads and their successors. There were other means of access into that region. One, of which particular mention is to be made in this volume, dodged the mountains and ran around to the lakes by way of the Mohawk River and the Genesee country. Various minor routes passed westward from the heads of the Susquehanna—one of them becoming famous as a railway route, but none becoming celebrated as roadways. From central and southern Virginia, routes, likewise to be followed by trunk railway lines, led onward toward the Mississippi Basin, but none, save only Boone's track, became of prime importance.
