The Mountain People had settled in the Blue Ridge long before the United State gained its independence.
They followed the Great Wagon Road from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to the Shenandoah Valley all the way south to Roanoke, Virginia—Big Lick as it was called back then. And they settled in the mountain hollows and in the valleys. Some took the Wilderness Road into Tennessee and Kentucky. Others continued south along the Great Wagon Road into the Carolinas and Georgia. They had brought with them a rich cultural tradition and lived somehow apart from the rest of the country. continued on page 14