Before American settlers traveled west in the 19th-century, they ventured south over the eight-hundred-mile long Great Wagon Road that ran from Philadelphia to Augusta, Georgia. James Dodson’s illuminating and entertaining first-person history, The Road That Made America, restores this long-forgotten route to its rightful place in our national story.

In the mid-1700s, waves of European colonists in search of land for new homes left Pennsylvania to settle in the colonial backcountry of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. The traveled on the Great Wagon Road, a mass migration route that opened the Southern frontier and wilderness east of the Appalachian Mountains. More than one hundred thousand settlers, including the author's ancestors, made this arduous trek, which brought both liberation and danger, as the road was the scene of many military encounters during the French and Indian conflict and the Revolutionary War. Drawing on years of fieldwork and scholarship by an army of archeologists, academics, archivists, preservationists, and passionate history lovers, James Dodson uncovered and then followed the original path of the Great Wagon Road. The Road That Made America is his epic account of this little-known route, its origins, expeditions, and impact on our nation’s history.

James Dodson is the author of sixteen books, including Final Rounds, A Golfer’s Life (with Arnold Palmer), Ben Hogan: An American Life, American Triumvirate, and The Range Bucket List. His work has appeared in over fifty magazines and newspapers worldwide. He is the only two-time winner of the United States Golf Association’s Herbert Warren Wind Award for best golf book of the year. In 2011, Dodson was selected for membership in the Order of the Longleaf by the governor of North Carolina, a prestigious award for exemplary service to the state. He is the founding editor of O Henry magazine. He lives with his wife in North Carolina.

Ann G. Lawthers, Sc.D., is a genealogical researcher, educator, and author. From 2016 through 2023 she served as a Staff Genealogist at the Brue Family Learning Center of American Ancestors/New England Historic Genealogical Society. While Ann’s research interests focus on New England and Mid-Atlantic states, she also has a passion for understanding migration patterns and how our ancestors got from point A to point B. Her lecture portfolio spans a wide range of topics from genealogical building blocks to deeper dives into unique record sets and specific populations. She has contributed several articles to the American Ancestors and NGS (National Genealogical Society) magazines. She is author of a forthcoming book, Building Genealogical Skills, which will be published in 2026 by American Ancestors’ Newbury Street Press. She is a graduate of Wellesley College and the Harvard School of Public Health, now Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.