"Thigpen's Trace"
THIGPEN TRACE “Thigpen Trace, the oldest military road in Georgia, was cut by James Thigpen to transport military supplies of Col. James Moore, former Carolina governor. It followed a well beaten trail of the Indians from the mountains to the sea in use before the era of the white man. Coming from South Carolina above the Broad River, along the Chattahoochee water divide to the Gulf of Mexico, it avoided all swamps and great rivers. The English claimed the territory as Carolina while the Spanish claimed it as Florida. Col. Moore led the English in an attack down Thigpen Trail and “made Carolina as safe as the conquest of the Spanish and Appalachee (Indians) can make it.” GHM 159-3 GEORGIA HISTORICAL COMMISSION 1956 Perhaps the most important road in North Carolina history, Thigpen's Trace is a road most have never heard about. It has a highway marker in Georgia but none in South Carolina, Virginia, and North Carolina. It dates back to 1704 and profoundly