Apalatean Mountains

The accounts of the Juan Pardo Expedition [To review: Click Here] are the last records we have concerning the Appalachian Summit for over one hundred years. Not until after the founding of English settlements on the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and the Ashley River in South Carolina, did Europeans again enter the Summit area. Just as the Spanish had been in search of gold, so too were the English on a search, not for gold, but for the long sought passage to the Pacific Ocean which they believed was only a few days journey beyond the Appalachian Mountains.

In 1670 John Lederer journeyed from the James River, Virginia settlement southward through the piedmont of North Carolina, and westward to within sight of the Appalachian Mountains, where he turned back.

John Lederer –

"The fourteenth of March, from the top of an eminent hill, I first descried that Apalatean mountains, bearing due west to the place I stood upon: their distance from me was so great, that I could bearly discern whether they were mountains or clouds. . ."

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