Commerce and Mail
The Wilderness Road served as a great path of commerce for the early settlers in Kentucky. Horses, cattle, sheep and hogs found a waiting market in the Carolinas, Maryland and Virginia. Hogs in groups of 500 or more were driven down the Road to market. Beef in Eastern markets had become a main source of income for farmers in Kentucky.
A postal road was opened in 1792 from Bean Station, Tennessee through Cumberland Gap to Danville, Kentucky. This was due largely to the efforts of Governor Isaac Shelby of Kentucky. This connection of Kentucky to the East was a great advantage. Frontier settlers considered the postal riders heroes and waited eagerly for their arrival for news from settlements along the trails as well as getting their mail and newspapers.
Read more about this topic: Wilderness Road
Famous quotes containing the words commerce and/or mail:
“I leave you, home,
when I’m ripped from the doorstep
by commerce or fate. Then I submit
to the awful subway of the world....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Always polite, fastidiously dressed in a linen duster and mask, he used to leave behind facetious rhymes signed “Black Bart, Po—8,” in mail and express boxes after he had finished rifling them.”
—For the State of California, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)