Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 1).djvu/71

Rh was that between the heads of the lake rivers and the heads of those flowing southward into the Ohio. Across this divide ran the Great Trail toward Detroit and the lake country. In western Virginia a strategic watershed was that formed between the heads of streams flowing northward into the Ohio and southward into the Kanawha. And in a remarkable degree the strategic points of a century and a half ago are the strategic points today, a fact attested by the courses of the more important trunk railway lines. The steady rise and importance of such a city as Akron, Ohio, is due to a strategic situation at the junction of both an important portage path and of a great watershed highway.

With all these facts in mind it is not presumptuous then to inquire whether the mound-building Indians did not find the high lands and mark out on them these first highways of America.