Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 2).djvu/97

Rh paigns will form the subject of several volumes of the present series; our purpose, here, is achieved by recognizing the route and properly classifying it.

As though hollowed by the Creator's hand for the sole purpose of opening a way from the seaboard to the interior of the continent, the trough between the Blue Ridge and Cumberland ranges was early found to lead surely but circuitously westward.

This trough between the mountain ranges was the course of the great path from Virginia to Kentucky and Illinois which played so great a part in the history of the Central West.

Two great branches from the Warriors' Path ran into what is now Tennessee and West Virginia. The main trail held steadily onward to Cumberland Gap. Passing this point it ran onward through Crab Orchard, Kentucky, to the "Falls" of the Ohio at Louisville. The great route onward to St. Louis may be said to have been this same roadway making for the Mississippi.