The Trading Path
Concord, Cabarrus County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
Trading Path. Colonial trading route started in 17th century; extended from southern Va. to land of Catawba & Waxhaw Indians in N.C. Passed near this spot.
Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The Story
The Trading Path was a colonial overland route that took shape in the 1600s, carrying traders and goods south from the Virginia settlements toward the Catawba and Waxhaw peoples of the Carolina Piedmont. Much of it followed far older Indigenous trails. This artery of deerskins, cloth, and manufactured wares helped open the backcountry to European settlement, and it passed near this spot.
Why it matters
The Trading Path knit together Native nations and colonial markets, and its course guided the settlement of the Carolina Piedmont for generations.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Long before there were highways or county lines in the Carolina Piedmont, there were paths — worn routes that followed the easiest ground between rivers, ridges, and villages. Many had been used for generations by Native peoples traveling and trading across the region. When Europeans pushed into the interior in the 1600s, they did not invent new roads so much as fall in behind these older ways.
The seventeenth century was an age of expanding trade in colonial America, and the deerskin trade in particular drew traders deep into the backcountry. From the settled areas of the Virginia colony, routes reached south toward the Native nations of the Carolina Piedmont, and this overland artery became one of the most important of them.
The country it crossed was not empty. It was home to Native communities, including the Catawba and Waxhaw peoples, whose towns and hunting grounds gave the trade its destination and its purpose. The path existed because there were partners at both ends of it.
People & events
The story here is less about a single famous person than about a steady stream of people whose names history mostly did not record: traders leading strings of packhorses, and the Native men and women who met them to exchange goods. Deerskins moved north and east toward colonial markets; cloth, tools, and other manufactured wares moved south and west into Native hands.
That exchange reshaped daily life on both sides. European goods entered Native communities and changed how people hunted, dressed, and worked, while the demand for deerskins tied Native economies to distant markets they never saw. It was a relationship of real benefit and real risk, and it deepened over the decades the path was in use.
As traders came and went, others followed. The same route that carried commerce also carried knowledge of the land, and it helped guide the settlers who would eventually pour into the backcountry. What began as a trade road became, in time, a road of settlement.
Its place in the American story
The Trading Path is a reminder that the American backcountry was opened along Indigenous routes, not across a blank frontier. The colonial economy reached inland by following trails that Native peoples had established, and the wealth of the deerskin trade helped knit the interior to the Atlantic world.
It also marks a turning point that played out across the colonies: the moment when trade relationships between Native nations and Europeans gave way to waves of permanent settlement. The path that once carried goods in both directions increasingly funneled newcomers in one direction — inland — with lasting consequences for the Native communities whose land it crossed.
Seen this way, a modest colonial trade route becomes part of the larger American story of contact, commerce, and displacement in the century before the Revolution.
If you visit
There is no grand ruin to see here — and that is part of the point. The marker asks you to notice something invisible: that the ground near this spot once carried one of the region's oldest and most important overland routes. The best thing to bring is your imagination.
As you stand here, picture packhorses rather than pavement, and think about why this line of travel made sense. Trading paths followed practical ground, so the lay of the land around you is a clue to why people moved through here for generations.
If you're touring the Piedmont, this is a good stop for thinking about the deep layers of history beneath a modern landscape. Watch for other Trading Path markers as you travel; together they trace a route that connected Virginia to the Native nations of the Carolinas, and following them turns a drive into a journey along a centuries-old road.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Trading Path
Charlotte, NC
The Trading Path, dating from the 1600s, linked Petersburg, Virginia, to the Catawba people of the Carolina Piedmont. Along it moved traders, packhorses, and the goods that bound Native nations to distant colonial markets. Following routes long used by Indigenous travelers, the path passed nearby and helped funnel settlers into the region.
The Trading Path
Waxhaw, NC
Beginning in the seventeenth century, the Trading Path ran from Petersburg, Virginia, deep into the Carolina backcountry to reach the Waxhaw people. Traders drove packhorses along the route, exchanging European goods for deerskins and building the earliest commercial ties between colony and Native nations. The path passed nearby, threading through country that would soon fill with settlers.
Red Hill
Concord, NC
Red Hill was the home and tavern of John and Martin Pheifer, a hospitable stop in the Cabarrus County backcountry where travelers of note broke their journeys. Its guests reportedly included royal Governor William Tryon and, later, President George Washington during his 1791 Southern Tour. Taverns like Red Hill were the inns, courtrooms, and news exchanges of their day.
Washington's Southern Tour
Salisbury, NC
In the spring of 1791, President George Washington set out on a grand tour of the southern states, determined to see the young nation for himself and to knit its scattered communities to the new federal government. On May 30–31 he stopped at Salisbury, then a bustling crossroads town of the Carolina backcountry. Local citizens turned out to greet the first president as he made his careful, unifying circuit through the region.