"The Kings Highway"
Mount Pleasant, Charleston County, South Carolina
Marker Inscription
The Kings Highway Route traveled by George Washington on his southern tour 1791 Erected by Rebecca Motte Chapter Daughters Of the American Revolution Charleston, S.C. George Washington Bicentennial 1732 โ 1932
The Story
The King's Highway began as a colonial post road, stitched together in the 1700s to connect the seaboard settlements from the northern colonies down through the Carolinas. By 1791 it had become the natural route for President George Washington's grand Southern Tour, a deliberate journey through the young nation's newest states to bind them to the federal government in person. This marker, set beside that old road in Mount Pleasant, was raised by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1932 to mark the bicentennial of Washington's birth.
Why it matters
The road traces how a scattering of former colonies knit themselves into a single country, and Washington's tour along it shows a new president working to make the idea of national union real to the people he governed.
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Related people
- ยท George Washington
Related events
- ยท George Washington's Southern Tour of 1791
- ยท George Washington Bicentennial (1932)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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