Interview with James Dodson (Author of "The Road that Made America")

And I want to tell you, I grew up hearing these stories and, and I learned about when, and I opened the book talking about when I was 16, I, I was, my dad took my brother and I to shoot mistletoe out of an old, his grandfather's abandoned home place.

And we ended up by a Creek called the Hall River, Hall River, rather, where, My double-double great-grandfather had a gristmill, and that's where I first heard about the Great Wagon Road.

My dad said, our ancestors came down it.

Your mother's German people in Maryland came down it.

My brother and I were both Eagle Scouts.

We grew up in the woods, hiking and camping.

We also played a little golf, but mostly we were obsessed with history.

My dad was.

He was a newspaper man.

I vowed, and as I say at the end of that first little opening, I said, can we go find that road? He said, well, it's pretty well lost.

Maybe someday you'll go find it.

I want to tell you, it really was lost until about 20 years ago.

When local historians and civic historians and state cartographers and a lot of people, especially local historical organizations, began to wonder where this road ran.

I mean, they knew the general... path of it and over about the last 15 years they've completely figured out where this road ran and i want to add one other thing that's the road that brought almost all of the the elements of life that you see today.

The first clocks went down that road.

The first grapes grown by a Frenchman in Pennsylvania went down that road.

The first apples, cultivated apples.

I mean, it's an amazing how this, this was an artery that pumped vitality.

German engineering.

The Moravians were famous for their beautiful architecture and their amazing handmade structures on doors.

And their musicians, they brought... classical music to a wilderness down the Great Wagon Road.

That was the Moravians.

And there were three Moravian settlements along the Great Wagon Road.

So it really is the artery that brought culture, civilization, ingenuity, engineering, and good old American pluck.

Because it's probably estimated, one historian said to me, there's not a family who traveled down that road.

And I want to tell you, I grew up hearing these stories and, and I learned about when, and I opened the book talking about when I was 16, I, I was, my dad took my brother and I to shoot mistletoe out of an old, his grandfather's abandoned home place.

And we ended up by a Creek called the Hall River, Hall River, rather, where, My double-double great-grandfather had a gristmill, and that's where I first heard about the Great Wagon Road.

My dad said, our ancestors came down it.

Your mother's German people in Maryland came down it.

My brother and I were both Eagle Scouts.

We grew up in the woods, hiking and camping.

We also played a little golf, but mostly we were obsessed with history.

My dad was.

He was a newspaper man.

I vowed, and as I say at the end of that first little opening, I said, can we go find that road? He said, well, it's pretty well lost.

Maybe someday you'll go find it.

I want to tell you, it really was lost until about 20 years ago.

When local historians and civic historians and state cartographers and a lot of people, especially local historical organizations, began to wonder where this road ran.

I mean, they knew the general... path of it and over about the last 15 years they've completely figured out where this road ran and i want to add one other thing that's the road that brought almost all of the the elements of life that you see today.

The first clocks went down that road.

The first grapes grown by a Frenchman in Pennsylvania went down that road.

The first apples, cultivated apples.

I mean, it's an amazing how this, this was an artery that pumped vitality.

German engineering.

The Moravians were famous for their beautiful architecture and their amazing handmade structures on doors.

And their musicians, they brought... classical music to a wilderness down the Great Wagon Road.

That was the Moravians.

And there were three Moravian settlements along the Great Wagon Road.

So it really is the artery that brought culture, civilization, ingenuity, engineering, and good old American pluck.

Because it's probably estimated, one historian said to me, there's not a family who traveled down that road.