Pequot Path: Difference between revisions

The '''Pequot Path''' ran about 51 miles (83 kilometers) near the ocean shore from Providence to Westerly, Rhode Island. At least one authority asserts the route also included the island community of Newport.<ref>[http://qb.mindhenge.org/PostRoad.html On the Trail of Benjamin Franklin: The Lower Boston Post Road] (accessed 20 October 2014).</ref> All seem to agree it was certainly extended into central Connecticut, but the earliest name of the trail in Connecticut is unclear (before it was called the Boston Post Road). The Pequot Path route was part of the American Indian trails that were widened by European colonists into a wagon roads, including those from Providence to Westerly in far southwest Rhode Island.<ref>Frederic J. Wood, ''The Turnpikes of New England and the Evolution of the Same Through England, Virginia, and Maryland'' (Boston: Marshall Jones, 1919), 25. [https://archive.org/details/turnpikesofnewen00woodrich Internet Archive version online].</ref> This path became part of a chain of shorter roads that formed the '''lower fork of the [[Boston Post Road]]''' (Boston-New York) with connecting legs from Boston to Providence ([[Old Roebuck Road]]) to Westerly (Pequot Path) to New Haven, Connecticut to New York City. The long route from Boston to New York to Charleston, South Carolina was also known as the [[King's Highway]] from the 1750s to about 1780.