Valley of Virginia, by way of Wadkins on the Potomac, was used by
German and Irish traders probably as early as 1700
The long Philadelphia Road from the Lancaster region into the
Valley of Virginia, by way of Wadkins on the Potomac, was used by
German and Irish traders probably as early as 1700. In 1728 the
people of Maryland were petitioning for a road from the ford of
the Monocacy to the home of Nathan Wickham. Four years later Jost
Heydt, leading an immigrant party southward, broke open a road
from the York Barrens toward the Potomac two miles above Harper”s
Ferry. This avenue by way of the Berkeley, Staunton, Watauga, and
Greenbrier regions to Tennessee and Kentucky–was the longest and
most important in America during the Revolutionary period. The
Virginia Assembly in 1779 appointed commissioners to view this
route and to report on the advisability of making it a wagon road
all the way to Kentucky. In 1795, efforts were made in Kentucky
to turn the Wilderness Trail into a wagon road, and in this same
year the Kentucky Legislature passed an act making the route from
Crab Orchard to Cumberland Gap a wagon road thirty feet in width.