The Trading Path
Waxhaw, Union County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
Trading Path. Colonial trading route, dating from the seventeenth century, from Petersburg, Virginia, to the Waxhaw Indians in Carolina, passed nearby.
Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The Story
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.
Why it matters
This colonial highway of the Piedmont carried the trade and traffic that reshaped Native and settler life alike across the Carolinas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the seventeenth century, the Carolina backcountry lay well beyond the edge of European settlement, but it was far from unreachable. A network of overland routes linked the Virginia colony to the Native nations of the interior, and traders learned to travel them in search of the region's most valuable commodity: deerskins.
One of these routes ran from Petersburg, Virginia — a gateway on the fall line where goods gathered before heading inland — deep into Carolina to reach the Waxhaw people. It was a long haul through rolling country, made passable by following ground that Native travelers had used long before any trader arrived.
This was the world before the great wave of settlement: a frontier defined by exchange rather than fences, where the relationship between colony and Native nation was carried on the backs of packhorses. The path passed through this very country, threading toward Native towns that gave it its reason for being.
People & events
The characters in this story are the traders and the Waxhaw people they came to meet. From Petersburg, traders set out with packhorses loaded down with European goods, following the route south to exchange them for deerskins and other products of the hunt. It was slow, demanding travel, and it required trust built up over repeated journeys.
For the Waxhaw, the trade brought new materials and tools into their communities, while their skill as hunters and partners made the whole enterprise possible. This was a two-way relationship: the path only worked because there were people at its far end willing to meet the traders and deal with them.
Over time, the traders' route became a road others could follow. Knowledge of the way south spread, and the packhorse trails that had carried commerce began to carry settlers. The country the path passed through would not stay a frontier for long.
Its place in the American story
This route is a thread in a much larger pattern that shaped early America: the way colonial trade reached inland along Indigenous routes, binding Native nations to Atlantic markets through the deerskin trade. Petersburg's role as a starting point shows how coastal and fall-line towns funneled goods deep into the continent.
It also captures a fateful transition. Trade paths were the first sustained European presence in many interior regions, and where trade went, settlement often followed. The same road that carried mutual exchange became a conduit for the newcomers who would transform — and displace — the Native communities along it.
So a single colonial trading route stands in for a continental process: commerce opening the way, and settlement following behind, in the generations before the Revolution.
If you visit
Don't expect a monument to a road; expect an invitation to see one that is no longer there. The marker tells you that a centuries-old route from Virginia passed nearby, and the reward is in the imagining — packhorses moving through this landscape toward Waxhaw towns.
Take a moment to read the terrain. Colonial paths followed the practical contours of the land, so the hills and drainages around you hint at why travelers threaded through here rather than somewhere else.
For a road trip, this stop rewards curiosity more than sightseeing. The Trading Path appears on markers across the Carolina Piedmont, and seeking them out lets you trace, mile by modern mile, a route that once connected a Virginia trading town to the Native nations of the Carolina interior.
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
Concord, NC
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.
R. Gregg Cherry
Gastonia, NC
R. Gregg Cherry served as governor of North Carolina from 1945 to 1949, guiding the state through the transition from World War II to peacetime. A former legislator, he championed better roads and rural electrification that modernized life for farm families across the state. His grave lies three miles southeast.
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.