This week I began tracing the Old Federal Road, beginning my trip in Pintlala/Hope Hull and traveling southwest toward Mobile, driving - when possible - the original road route, and sometimes the actual road itself.

Originally designated as a postal route through the Indian frontier, the Federal Road, which stretched through Creek territory in lower Alabama, became a dynamic feature of the geography of the American historical landscape. Like previous avenues west, Alabama's Federal Road helped usher in a new era of national expansion, communication, and exploitation of Native American groups. It functioned as a major thoroughfare for the western migration of settlers and slaves into present-day Alabama for the first three decades of the nineteenth century.¹


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