Old Federal Road

The Federal Road began as the Georgia Road, built from 1803 to 1805 as a toll highway through the Cherokee Nation and opened with the 1805 Treaty of Tellico land concession. It linked Savannah with Knoxville and was renamed the Federal Road in 1819, although no federal money paid for it. Travelers who passed on it settled nearby, pressing on Cherokee land; Georgia seized the remaining Cherokee territory in 1830 and gave it to settlers by lottery in 1832. The road stayed busy into the 1840s.

What the plaque says

Old Federal Road The Treaty of 1805 between the United States and the Cherokee Nation established the Old Federal Road. The road extended from the Tellico Blockhouse on the Little Tennessee River to the towns of Madisonville and Columbus, Tennessee. This route linked the states of Tennessee and Georgia for carrying mail and commerce. There was a postal stop in McMinn County in the small town of Cantrell's Crossroads, which later became Williamsburg. The postmaster, James D. Williams, owned a home along the road approximately one mile north of this spot.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ocoee Whitewater Center — 19 mi
  The Forest Service site on the Ocoee River in Cherokee National Forest that hosted the 1996 Olympic canoe slalom, on a river that TVA dams and releases by schedule.
• Sequoyah Birthplace Museum — 24 mi
  The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians' museum on Tellico Lake, near the town where Sequoyah was born, telling how he built the Cherokee syllabary and what the Tellico Dam drowned.
• Fort Loudoun State Historic Park — 25 mi
  A reconstructed 1756-57 British fort on the Little Tennessee River in Overhill Cherokee country, besieged in 1760 and surrendered on August 9 of that year.
• Red Clay State Historic Park — 33 mi
  The last seat of the Cherokee Nation before removal, where eleven general councils met from 1832 to 1837, now a state park with a council house replica, a sacred spring and an eternal flame.

More markers nearby

• Tennessee Wesleyan College — 7.8 mi
• Battle of Athens — 7.8 mi
• John Tyler Morgan — 8.6 mi
• Harry Thomas Burn 1895-1977 — 12 mi