The Very Worst Road contains sixteen contemporary accounts by travelers who reached Alabama along what was known as the “Old Federal Road,” more a network of paths than a single road, that ran from Columbus and points south in Georgia for more or less due west into central Alabama and to where the confluence of the Tallapoosa and Coosa Rivers forms the Alabama River.

 

These accounts deal candidly with the rather remarkable array of impediments that faced travelers in Alabama in its first decades as a state, and they describe with wonder, interest, and, frequently with some disgust, the road, the inns, the travelling companions, and the few and raw communities they encountered as they made their way, often with difficulty, through what seemed to many of them uncharted wilderness. The Very Worst Road was originally published by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission in 1998.

Col. Jeffrey C. Benton USAF (ret.) holds the MPS degree from Auburn University and an MA from the University of North Carolina. His other books include They Served Here: 33 Maxwell Men, A Sense of Place: Montgomery’s Architectural Heritage, and Air Force Officer’s Guide.

“One of the best [writings on early highways] is a little book titled The Very Worst Road, a compilation of the nightmarish accounts of travelers on the old Federal Road that crossed from Georgia through former Creek Indian lands to near Montgomery, where it jagged south. Built through mud and swamps as a corduroy log route, it was a universe apart from smooth, bland Interstate 85, which parallels part of the old road today.”

—Ben Windham, Tuscaloosa News