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.
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