Location
Other maps: Bing, Google, MapQuest.
Coordinates: 35.2687, -83.2943.
Type: Stop
Tour: Cherokee
County: Jackson, Macon
Full
The coordinates place you on Victory Church Road off US 23/441. Drive past the church and its school to the kudzu-covered dead end.
The owner at the second stop, Gold City Gold Mine, has kindly agreed to let tour visitors use his parking lot. For some old-fashioned mining fun, souvenir stones, or beautiful jewelry, stop in.[1]
The Original Road
In retaliation for a series of attacks on settlements along the frontier by Cherokees pushed off their lands, Patriot militia commanders from the Carolinas and Virginia launched coordinated campaigns to destroy their villages. You are standing in the footsteps of the Cherokees who took warnings to the Middle Towns about the North Carolina army of Brig. Gen. Griffith Rutherford, seeing the forested peaks they would have seen. The road you are on was built on top of the ancient trading path over what now is called both Cowee and Watauga Gap.
