Bonus! Before the roads of the 18c, the railroads of the 19c and the interstates and airports of the 20c, America was covered thick forests. The very best and fastest way to get around at that time–was by water.   George Washington was quite familiar with that America.

Washington traveled up to present day Pittsburgh and down the Ohio and aspired to extend Virginia into that territory.   When approaching the Atlantic Coast, he knew the North River and Hudson;  as well as the South River, which we now know as the Delaware River. And of course, he knew his home river of the Potomac which empties into the Chesapeake Bay. Washington wrote to his friend the Marquis de Lafayette that he dreamed of traveling up the East Coast to the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes, then down the Mississippi to New Orleans and Florida and finally home again:

“A great tour this you will say!  Probably may take place nowhere but in imagination…if it should be realized there would be nothing wanting to make it perfectly agreeable, but your company.” *

I have the privilege taking the great tour that George Washington imagines.  It is a wonderful adventure. Although my interests are mostly about reimagining an earlier colonial America, current practical information can be found about this itinerary by researching  “The Great Loop.”

* See especially Nathanial Philbrick’s In the Hurricanes’ Eye, The Genius of George Washington and Victory at Yorktown, Viking Press, 2018. Page 265.