The Great Stage Road

Before there were interstates, before there were railroads, before there was anything that modern Americans would recognize as a transportation system, there was the Great Stage Road. And it ran straight through Sullivan County.

The Great Stage Road was the primary overland route connecting the eastern seaboard to the trans-Appalachian frontier. Running from Philadelphia through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, across the mountains, and into the new settlements of what would become Tennessee, the road carried everything: stagecoaches, wagon trains, livestock herds, political dispatches, military orders, settlers with their worldly possessions, and merchants with goods to trade.

In Sullivan County, the road passed through Blountville — the county seat — and connected to the network of trails and wagon roads that spread across the Holston River valley. The road wasn't a single defined highway in the modern sense; it was a corridor, a web of interconnected paths that followed the natural geography of the mountains and valleys. But its importance to American westward expansion cannot be overstated.

One of the most vivid details of the Great Stage Road's operation survives in a Sullivan County place name: Exchange Place. This 1850s farmstead in Kingsport sits on the road where stagecoach horses were exchanged. Tired Virginia horses heading west were swapped for fresh Tennessee mounts, and Tennessee horses heading east were replaced by rested Virginia animals. The system kept the stagecoaches moving — a vital logistical requirement for a transportation network that covered hundreds of miles through rough mountain terrain.

The name stuck long after the stagecoaches stopped running. Today, Exchange Place operates as a living history farm, but the story it tells is fundamentally a transportation story — the story of the infrastructure that made American expansion possible.

Three future presidents traveled the Great Stage Road through Sullivan County: Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and Andrew Johnson. But they were far from the only significant travelers. Governor William Blount used the road network to communicate with Philadelphia while administering the Southwest Territory from Rocky Mount. Military dispatches during the Cherokee conflicts traveled this route. Settlers streaming into the new territory brought their families, livestock, and tools along the same corridor.

The road also carried commerce. East Tennessee's agricultural products — grain, livestock, whiskey — moved eastward along the road to Virginia markets. Manufactured goods — iron, textiles, household items — moved westward to the frontier settlements. The Great Stage Road was not just a highway; it was an economic artery that connected two worlds.

Every transportation network needs nodes — places where travelers stop, rest, exchange information, and prepare for the next leg. On the Sullivan County stretch of the Great Stage Road, the Old Deery Inn in Blountville was the premier waypoint.

Built in the late 18th century, the inn served the full spectrum of road travelers: politicians heading to Nashville or Washington, merchants moving goods, settlers pausing before the final push into the frontier, and military officers on official business. The three presidents who stayed at the inn were distinguished guests, but they were using the same infrastructure as every other traveler — the same beds, the same hearth, the same road.

The inn survives today, owned by Sullivan County and undergoing restoration. Its survival is remarkable — a physical artifact of a transportation system that transformed a continent.

You can still drive the approximate route of the Great Stage Road through Sullivan County. The road has been paved, the stagecoaches replaced by sedans and pickup trucks, but the geography is unchanged. The same mountain passes, the same river crossings, the same valley corridors that guided 18th-century travelers still guide modern ones.

The Where Tennessee Began app offers a free audio-guided driving tour of the Great Stage Road through Sullivan County — from Exchange Place in Kingsport through Blountville to Rocky Mount in Piney Flats. It's a drive worth making, not because the road is scenic (though it is), but because it connects you to the infrastructure that built a nation.