The Great Valley Road of Virginia: Shenandoah Landscapes from Prehistory to the Present chronicles the story of one of America's oldest, most historic, and most geographically significant roads. Native Americans had used the Great Valley of the Appalachians for travel and subsistence long before the arrival of Europeans. As one of the principal routes of Anglo-American migration and settlement, the Valley Road constituted a segment of a much longer road - the longest in early American history - that began in southeastern Pennsylvania and headed southwest into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia before threading through western North and South Carolina to upcountry Georgia. At the time of the American Revolution and thereafter, Americans used the Valley Road as a crucial link connecting eastern states through the Cumberland Gap to frontiers in Tennessee, Kentucky, southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and points beyond. Although other routes west developed during the nineteenth century, the rebuilding of the Valley Road as the Valley Turnpike assured that it would not only play a vital role in the economic and social life of the Shenandoah Valley, but also that it would continue to link this region to commercial and cultural centers in major East Coast cities. The strategic role that the Valley played in the American Civil War was rooted in its geography and transportation history. After the war the Valley Road aided in the rapid recovery of western Virginia. The continued importance of the Valley Road in the twentieth century is evidenced by its designation as one of America's most memorable and beautiful national highways, Route 11, and by the intensive use of its modern incarnation, Interstate 81. ""The Great Valley Road of Virginia"" features original, previously unpublished chapters by leading scholars who delve into four significant periods of the road's development - from prehistory to the colonial period, from the American Revolution to the early national period, from the development of the turnpike through the early twentieth century, and then from the turnpike era to the automobile age and the prominence of U.S. 11 before and after the opening of I-81. Emphasized throughout the chapters is a concern for landscape character and the connection of the land to the people who traveled the road, and for permanent residents, who depended upon it for their livelihoods. Also included in this title are chapters about the towns supported by the road as well as the relationship of physical geography (the lay of the land) to the engineering aspects of the road. More than one hundred maps, photographs, engravings, and line drawings enhance the book's value to scholars and general readers alike.
