Old Federal Road
This highway from Tate to Talking Rock follows substantially the course of the old Federal Road. The earliest thoroughfares to link Georgia and Tennessee across the Cherokee Nation. Permission to use the way was granted informally by the Indians in 1803 and formally by the 1803 Treaty of Tellico Tenn.
The Federal Road was the first vehicular thoroughfare west of the Chattahoochee, the earliest postal route of this section of the state and a leading emigrant trace to Tennessee and North Alabama. Kentucky and Tennessee stock man drove animals down this artery to Southern markets.
GHM 112-3B Georgia Historical Commission 1954
Plaque courtesy Lat34North.com.
Original page, with additional info, here.
Photo credit: Byron Hooks of Lat34North.com.