"Perrier is a consummate tour guide, making the readers know they are directed by an authority. About all she engages the reader in the landscape's many dimensi---historical, geographic, and
environmental. One is wello advised to travel I-81 with Perrier's book in hand." author of Motoring: The Highway Experience in America
Its northernmost point at the U.S.-Canadian border, on Wellesley Island, New York, through the Appalachians to its southernmost point near Dandridge, Tennessee, Interstate 81 links the
Northeast with the non-Atlantic South. One of the major routes of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, the I-81 corridor was always a much-traveled
route, known, for much of its history, as "The Great Warriors Trace."
Part of I-81 drifts through the magnigicent shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Robert E. Lee Retured to this area after the Civil War and spent countless hours in the saddle roaming the hillsides,
finding solace as he followed the woods and streams. Hiawatha lived and hunted along its northern reaches. Thomas Jefferson regularly rode from Monticello to homes he maintained at Natural
Bridge and Poplar Camp. Andrew Jackson visited one small town along the way so often that the townsfolk renamed their community in his honor. George Washington surveyed it, Daniel Boone
explored it, and thousands of pioneers of Scottish, Irish, and German decent settled it.
This guide provides a contemporary context for theinterstate and the stories of those who once journeyed along its trace. Dianne Perrier urges the curious I-81 traveler not only to learn about
the history and curlture of the landscape, but to make some discoveries about the history and culture of the landscape, but to make some disoceries about the world at large.
Today, the Great Warriors Trace has become a ocncrete ribbon of grey. A Journey that once took days now can be completed in about fourteen hours. Perrieros fascinating cultural history of the
famous route reveals how grasslands and fdorests that once nourished buffalo now feed the demand for unimpeded travel. The reslult is a glimpse into both the heart and heartland of
America---state by state, exit by exit.
