Speaker Spotlight: Tom Magnuson

W164 - Ground Transportation and Routes in Early Colonial Carolina on Wednesday, 11 May 2011 at 7:00 p.m.

The Trading Path Association (TPA) has studied muscle powered transportation physics to understand what was possible in land transportation when our ancestors moved about the interior of the continent quite out of sight of government.  Those studies culminated in current projects for the mapping of our common past by mapping our roads, trails and paths.  In fact TPA research uncovered the fact that there are numerous visible traces of Native American foot paths, early colonial horse trails, and 17th and 18th century wagon roads.  The TPA also learned that, until the middle of the 19th century, very few people lived more than a few feet from their main source of information, their road.  With these discoveries the TPA set out on a project to map and protect the landscapes of our common past because those remnants point to the archaeological evidence that will tell us who was where, when, and what they were doing. 

This talk will describe basic pre-modern transportation physics and some of the growing number of internet tools available for coming to grips with how our forbearers got from hither to yon.

Thomas R. Magnuson is Trading Path Association founder and co-founder of the Historic Mapping Congress, which studies muscle-powered transportation and labors for the protection of
colonial landscapes.

Speaker Spotlight: Tom Magnuson