The Very Worst Road
Travellers' Accounts of Crossing Alabama's Old Creek Indian Territory, 1820-1847

Jeffrey C. Benton (Compiled by)

9780817355500, The University of Alabama Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 January 2009

176 pages, 4 illustrations, 1 map
21.6 x 14.1 x 1.2 cm, 0.242 kg

The Very Worst Road was originally published by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission in 1998. ""The Very Worst Road"" contains sixteen contemporary accounts by travelers who reached Alabama along what was known as the 'Old Federal Road'. More of a network of paths than a single road, it ran from Columbus and points south in Georgia for more or less due west into central Alabama and to where the confluence of the Tallapoosa and Coosa Rivers forms the Alabama River. These accounts deal candidly with the rather remarkable array of impediments that faced travelers in Alabama in its first decades as a state. They also describe with wonder, interest, and, frequently with some disgust, the road, the inns, the travelling companions, and the few and raw communities they encountered as they made their way, often with difficulty, through what seemed to many of them uncharted wilderness.