Historic Highways of America/Volume 12/Preface
PREFACE
THIS volume is devoted to two great lines of pioneer movement, one through northern Virginia and the other through central New York. In the former case the Old Northwestern Turnpike is the key to the situation, and in the latter the famous Genesee Road, running westward from Utica, was of momentous importance.
A chapter is given to the Northwestern Turnpike, showing the movement which demanded a highway, and the legislative history which created it. Then follow two chapters of travelers' experiences in the region covered. One of these is given to the Journal of Thomas Wallcutt (1790) through northern Virginia and central Pennsylvania. Another chapter presents no less vivid descriptions from quite unknown travelers on the Virginian roads.
The Genesee Road is presented in chapter four as a legislative creation; the whole history of this famous avenue would be practically a history of central New York. To give the more vivid impression of personal experience a chapter is devoted to a portion of Thomas Bigelow's Tour to Niagara Falls 1805 over the Genesee Road in its earliest years, when the beautiful cities which now lie like a string of precious gems across this route were just springing into existence. For a chapter on the important "Catskill Turnpike," which gives much information of road-building in central New York, we are indebted to Francis Whiting Halsey's The Old New York Frontier.
The final chapter of the volume includes a number of selections from the spicy, brilliant descriptions of pioneer traveling in America which Dickens left in his American Notes, and a few pages describing an early journey on Indian trails in Missouri from Charles Augustus Murray's Travels in North America.
Marietta, Ohio, January 26, 1904.