Now at the crossroad, they entered "The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road," the super highway of colonial America. The road stretched nearly 700 miles, from Philadelphia to Augusta Georgia, passed the hamlets and villages of York Pennsylvania, Hagerstown Maryland, Winchester, Strasburg, and Stauton Virginia, then across the North Carolina border to Salisbury, and Camden. And, now with Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road, it ran all the way to Kentucky, and south to "The Territory South of the Ohio River."

Ahead lay a 500-mile adventure that would require nearly six weeks by wagon to traverse. This long wagon road was also known from time to time, as "The Carolina Road," "The Great Trading Path," and "The Road to Yadkin River." Before 1740, it followed a route that passed through Lancaster to Harris' Ferry, the Cumberland Valley, by way of Falling Spring, to Hagerstown Maryland, then south through Winchester, Staunton, Roanoke, Martinville, and on to the Carolina settlements.

Late in the 1740's travelers began to follow a shorter route by way of Lancaster to Winchester, and on to York, and crossing the Susquehanna River at Wright's Ferry, and William's Ferry on the Potomac River. This was the route the Thorlton's were following. They were now in the Cumberland Valley, which lay between South Mountain to the east, and the Alleghenies to the west. This new gateway to the southern Scotch-Irish settlements along the Shenandoah Valley, and in North Carolina, and Tennessee, had changed little in the 120 years since John Lederer passed through the Manassas Gap of the Blue Ridge mountains and beheld ". . . Broad savannahs, flowery meadows, where herds of red deer were feeding." Mr. Lederer was actually in the Shenandoah Valley when he penned those words, but the Cumberland Valley and the Shenandoah Valley are northern and southern extensions of the same valley, and if not divided by the Potomac River would be unbroken.

Soon they rolled past Antrim near "The Conococheague Settlement" where Robert and Margaret Caldwell began their adventure forty-four years earlier. Here they crossed the Mason and Dixon line, the Pennsylvania border into Maryland, and passed through the beautiful Cumberland area, dotted with the neat farms of the Germans and Quakers who had settled there. Near here at a little town named Sharpsburg, one of John and Margaret's great grandsons would return, in sixty-eight years to die.

Before they knew it two weeks had passed, and they were already at the Potomac River, and the tiny town of Williamsport, Maryland. Here Mr. Evan Watkins and his wife Mary settled in 1741 in what was then known as Maidstone. Mr. Watkin's first one-room log cabin was soon enlarged in to accommodate his growing family. Soon his place was big enough to service overnight guests, and he built a forge, to make and repair iron implements. He also built a store and tavern to offer food, supplies, and drink for the thirsty traveler. It became Watkin's Ferry in 1744, when the Virginia Assembly ordered a ferry crossing built on the Potomac River, where the road crossed the shallow ford from Maryland into Virginia. The act in part read;

"On the Patomack River from Evan Watkins landing opposite to the mouth of Anagochego Creek to Edmund Wade's land in Maryland, the price for a man 3 pence and for a horse 3 pence."

It was later known as Light's Ferry, then Lemen's Ferry, and Williams Ferry, and finally Williamsport. Here the Thorltons and Thompsons stayed the night and crossed the ferry at first light. Now in Virginia they soon came to Winchester, where they entered the Beautiful Shenandoah Valley. To the east under the blue hazy cloak that always lay over the mountains, and gave the "Blue Ridge," its name, the trees were covering themselves with their green adornments. It had been cold, the kind of wet winter cold that goes to the bone. But now it was warming more each day. The Shenandoah River was high with the spring thaw, the dogwood would soon bloom, and everywhere the earth was green, and Margaret felt better, as all around her everything was renewing itself. And she thought, we are too, seeking a new place, to build a new home, and a new life. Why man is just like nature he has to renew himself, throw off the old and grow something new. And there was a slight smile on her face that morning as she climbed into the wagon seat, and heard the snap of John's whip across the backs of the wagon team. Slowly the big wheels of the Conestoga Wagon once again, began to roll south.

The road between Winchester and Big Lick was pretty much the same. On both sides stood the gentle sloping walls of the mountains, as they traveled over rolling hills, passing farms, and houses, and from time to time a town. And they were not alone on this road, as Margaret had feared they would be. The road was busy with travelers and merchants. In Virginia the road was even maintained by local farmers who subsidized their farm income with the money paid by Virginia for their labors. From time to time they even passed an inn or public house, like, the "Admiral Warren" once owned by the brother-in-law of Richard Penn, or the one operated by Thomas Harrison who would deed the land for the future site of Harrisonburg, Virginia to the state. And there was Valentin Sevier, father of the Tennessee leader, who owned one of these inns. And the Inn ran by a John Lincoln who had come south on the road from Berks County, Pennsylvania, and settled in Rockingham County, Virginia. Here he operated his Inn which became very well known. His son Abraham ran a farm in the county till he moved west, where he was killed by an Indian in 1786. His son Thomas moved to Kentucky and there had a son, which he named for his father, Abraham. This son of Thomas Lincoln would become our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln.

On south they went passed Staunton, Draper's Meadow near Ingle's Ferry, Lexington, Fincastle, the Natural Bridge, and the Big Lick, later to be, Roanoke Virginia where the road forked. The Great Wagon Road went on south, while the Thorlton's turned west on the Wilderness Road heading their team toward Fort Chiswell. Now on the road four weeks they would for the first time, see the banks of the Holston River, as their wagon rolled into the "Territory South of the Ohio River." They passed to the east of the old settlement of Castles Woods, then passed Moccasin Gap, which led to the Cumberland Gap some sixty miles west, as they followed the west bank of the North Branch of the Holston River passed Long Island, and through Carter's Valley. Soon they came to the Watauga, a tributary of the Holston. The ford of the Watauga is very deep but with some difficulty the Thorltons and the Thompsons cross over and they rolled into the valley that would be their new home. Here where Lick Creek flows into the Nolachucky River, which in turn gives up its water to the French Broad River, and in the distance lay the Great Smoky Mountains, in this fertile valley John Thorlton bought a farm of 200 acres, on the banks of Lick Creek, in the new County of Greene, some 12 miles from the old Crockett homestead;