Many of the early pioneer roads were little more than footpaths or primitive wagon trails that followed the “traces” or pathways carved through the mountain wilderness by animals and early human inhabitants. Rugged and poorly maintained, these roads made for rough passage into the Swannanoa Valley.
Statesville through the Swannanoa Valley to Asheville and return.
The Swannanoa Gap trail was doubtless the first road into Buncombe from the east It led from Old Fort to the head of the Swannanoa River and Bee Tree Creek, where the earliest settlers built a community about 1782. This road did not cross as is often believed at the place where the Swannanoa railroad tunnel is today. Rather it crossed a half mile further south, going over the Catawba River headwaters before descending into the Swannanoa Valley.
As more settlers crossed the Blue Ridge and headed west, the fledgling Buncombe County government signed agreements with private road builders to construct better thoroughfares throughout the region. Among these was the Buncombe Turnpike, completed in 1827, running north-south from Greeneville, Tennessee, to Greenville, South Carolina, both towns named for the same Revolutionary War hero, Gen. Nathaniel Greene. (See sidebar.)
The Western Turnpike, much of it following along the Rutherford Trace, ran east-west from Salisbury, North Carolina, through Buncombe County to points west. It was well underway by the 1820s and completed by 1850.
These two roads, like the Swannanoa and French Broad Rivers that partially shaped them, intersected at Asheville. Until the coming of the railroad in 1879, stagecoaches traveling the Western Turnpike brought travelers to and through the Swannanoa Valley.
(Information partially taken from “The Roads of Madison County,” by Sam Gray, page 293, May We All Remember Well, Vol. II.)
