I had a very nice Saturday evening listening to the music played by my son's band at Huck in downtown Huntington. Joe Randolph was also in attendance. He was telling me about the trip he and Erin had just made to Williamsburg Virginia for a wedding. And when he mentioned New Market road, I immediately thought of my talk on the great wagon road earlier in the month. New Market was the location of the trading post that Valentine Sevier owned! Is there a chance that the New Market road and the road that crossed the Great Wagon road at the site of Valentine's establishment were one and the same? Below is a copy of my slide for the Great Wagon Road talk:
On my actual slide the information is clearer and the road that crosses the Great Wagon road at New Market is labelled Route 211. You can see by the Map below why there would have been a road between Communities in the eastern part of Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley in that particular spot. The gap in the blue ridge Mountains is quite large there. This gap is named Thornton Gap. I think the road was already in existence when Valentine Sevier chose the spot for his trading post. There is also a road to the west which would probably have been already in existence as well that the Indians would have used to visit Valentine's trading post to bring animal skins and etc to trade for axes, guns, etc.
Legend indicates that the road was once an Indian trail. In the early nineteenth century, a “new market” was established in Richmond to replace the old one in Williamsburg. This road was eventually referred to as New Market Road. The 1819 Wood’s map of Henrico names a village called New Market near the current intersection of New Market and Kingsland Roads. Originally called River Road, the name changed to New Market Road prior to the printing of the 1853 Smith’s map of Henrico County. In 1976, the road was designated as a Virginia Byway.
Route 211(which would have followed the old Indian trail that forms the crossroads with The Great Wagon Road) ends at Warrenton, Virginia going toward DC rather than Richmond. Crossroads/New Market would be located on below map just below Luray Caverns where 211 crosses I81 at the bottom of the map. I can't help but wonder if Warrenton was on the
