North Carolina’s Oldest Roads: Geography, Physics, and Geopolitics of Movement in Pre-Modern Times in the Old North State

What geographic factors determine where a path, trail or road wends its way across North Carolina? What physical factors dictated transportation and settlement patterns in Colonial times in the Old North State? This presentation touches on the geology and geography of pre-modern byways, the flora and fauna needed for travel, and the environmental and geopolitical factors determining where we live to this day.

Tom Magnuson is the founder and CEO of the Trading Path Association (TPA), a non-profit organization committed to finding remnants of the Contact Era in the southeast and protecting them from accidental destruction.  By education a military historian who received his master’s degree from San Jose State College, Magnuson stumbled on the importance of the old roads and the TPA’s methods of finding them while studying military geopolitics more than 25 years ago.

This presentation is made possible through funding from the North Carolina Humanities Council. The North Carolina Humanities Council is a nonprofit foundation and a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.