Fincastle Turnpike

Fincastle Turnpike. Wilderness Road. “The Wilderness Road” sums up the iconic meaning of the lives of Daniel Boone and the thousands of settlers who poured after him through the great gap into Kentucky. In its various forms as frontier trail, wagon road, stage route and antebellum turnpike, the road directed pilgrims and travelers to the West. Whatever your background, as the starting point for the settlement of the West, the Great Migration Route over the Cumberland Gap tells your story as an American. , Fincastle Turnpike is one of the six sections that comprise the Wilderness Road. The Price's Gap Turnpike and Cumberland Gap Road was authorized by the legislature in 1831, the same year as the James River and Kanawha Canal. It brought agricultural produce from Kentucky and southwest Virginia directly into Botetourt County for transportation by the canal into eastern Virginia, bypassing the traditional route of the Great Road and stimulating the development of towns along the way. The road became known as the Fincastle Turnpike at its western end. , Virginia Room at Tazewell County Public Library , Tazewell Historic District, 310 East Main Street, Tazewell, Virginia. The Tazewell County Public Library's Virginia Room, located in the Tazewell Historic District, is intended to help visitors discover their family history in this region. The Virginia Room contains about 1500 volumes of published history, biography, records of the census, births, marriages, land transactions, tax assessments, wills, deaths, and cemeteries, newspapers, maps and gazetteers, as well as how-to guides to research. , Crab Orchard Museum and Pioneer Park/Fort Witten , 3663 Crab Orchard Road, Tazewell, Virginia. Crab Orchard Museum presents not only local history but a comprehensive overview of the Appalachian region, with important exhibits on early life, military history, and a natural history section documenting the animals of Southwest Virginia. The museum's exhibit of Native American artifacts displays the results of excavations at the nearby Crab Orchard site, a large Woodland village. Pioneer Park village includes log structures that have been reassembled to show what daily life was once like in western Virginia. , Wolf Creek Indian Village and Museum , 6394 North Scenic Highway, Bastian, Virginia. Between 1490 and 1530 AD, a small group of Native Americans settled along Wolf Creek in present-day Bland County. They build a circular palisaded village to house as many as 100 people. Excavation of the site in 1970 revealed 14 structures and a wealth of artifacts. The Wolf Creek Indian Village and Museum opened in 1998 to interpret the story of the region's pre-historic peoples, including a full recreation of the village. , Burke's Garden , Burke's Garden, Virginia. This ten-mile wide bowl-shaped valley is filled with some of the most fertile farmland in the state. It is the highest mountain valley in Virginia and its extraordinary beauty can be seen from the Appalachian Trail or from State Route 623. It was first discovered in the 1740s By James Burke, while hunting in the area. Settlers of German origin took up land in the late eighteenth century. The Central Church and cemetery were established in the late 1820s. The cemetery includes numerous German-style grave markers dating from the 1830s. The present wood-frame church was built in 1875.