Down by the River

The North Carolina Division of Archives and History placed this historic marker on the Forsyth County side of the Yadkin River along Yadkinville Road in 1988. It denotes the location of the historic Shallow Ford crossing and its connection to several Revolutionary War incidents.

The Shallow Ford

More than 250 years ago, long before cars and trucks were driving over the Yadkin River on Yadkinville Road, the land along the river was occupied by Indians who farmed the bottomland and fished in the river. By the mid-1700s, Europeans had begun settling in the area.

Shallow Ford was a spot along the Yadkin River so named for a solid rock base — 100 feet wide and 300 feet from bank-to-bank — and a water level that averaged less than three feet deep. Those characteristics made Shallow Ford an ideal location for wagons, stagecoaches and army cannons to safely cross the river.

Over a seven-year period, settlers in the area finished cutting the roads on both sides of the Yadkin River at Shallow Ford, thereby completing the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road in 1754.

Additional Historical Information

This northern view of the Yadkin River from the Yadkinville Road bridge shows the river — often referred to as the “muddy Yadkin” — on a day when the red clay over which it runs was not so apparent in the water.

Information provided by the Lewisville Historical Society describes the early settlement roads from the Shallow Ford:

The Shallow Ford was a major hub of roads, all of them important in the settlement of the northern Piedmont, and all of them cut before the American Revolution. The Great Wagon Road began in Philadelphia, passed through the Great Valley of Virginia to Roanoke, crossed the Shallow Ford, and incorporated Sherrill’s Path as its southern route, to Statesville, Sherrill’s Ford (now covered by Lake Norman), Belmont, and through South Carolina to Augusta, Georgia by 1754. It became the most important road for western settlement of this country.

Shallow Ford was also the site of Stoneman’s Raid, which occurred near the end of the Civil War. Under General George Stoneman, 3,500 Union troops skirmished with approximately 100 men of the Yadkin County Home Guard. Stoneman destroyed the Red Store at Huntsville before marching to Salisbury.

For more information on North Carolina’s historic sites, check out the website for the North Carolina Office of Archives and History. It’s a very well-done website with lots of photos, information and related web links.

Other articles on this website that may be of interest to you: Exploring Shallow Ford, The Great Wagon Road, The Nissen Wagon Museum.