The First Post Road Through the Carolinas

The road that passed near this spot in the seventeen thirties was part of the first continuous mail route connecting the American colonies from New England to Charleston. The colonial postmaster general, a former Virginia governor, ordered a road cut south through the Carolinas around seventeen thirty-eight, and by seventeen thirty-nine a postal courier was making monthly runs along the full length of the route, passing through Edenton, New Bern, the Cape Fear region, and on into South Carolina. It was the first time mail moved with any regularity through North Carolina. The route proved difficult to maintain in the sandy coastal terrain and fell into disrepair within a generation, but it laid the template for what would eventually become the main north-south highway of the colonial Eastern Seaboard, known later as the King's Highway.