Chapter 10Traveling West
By 1846, Abingdon was seventy years old and had become one of the major towns between Winchester and Knoxville. It served as a crossroads for both north-south and east-west travelers. Charles’ father had told him that the town had been a part of the original Great Road that Colonel William Byrd III had cut through the wilderness to connect Richmond with Kingsport nearly a century before. Byrd had spent all his money, other than what he had squandered gambling, on this venture. Byrd’s loss was surely Southwest Virginia’s, especially Abingdon’s, gain. Even the famous Daniel Boone had left his mark on the area. The legend was that in 1760 the great frontiersman had named the area Wolf Hills because his hunting dogs had been attached there by a pack of wolves.
