(Text from streaming video release on Fess Green's Book, "Wilderness Road Odyssey")
Fess Green pedaled his way through history. This management and marketing professor chronicled his adventures in his book Wilderness Road Odyssey. Green took one week of vacation every year for five years to ride his bike along the oldest western migration route in American history -- The Wilderness Road. The 850-mile trail stretches from Pennsylvania to Kentucky -- with much of it in our own backyard.
Fess Green: “In the early days, the road was nowhere near the condition it is today. It was more of a trail, rutted wagon furrows going through woods and into meadows. What is Mud Pike Road in Christiansburg was part of it, Rock Road in Radford and Wilderness Road in Pulaski County were all part of the original Wilderness Road.”
When Green wanted to research the road, information was not easy to find.
Green: “I got interested in this when I visited the Wilderness Road Museum nearby and asked if they had any books on the Wilderness Road. And they did not and weren’t able to offer me very much. So I began researching it on my own with the help of a friend who eventually became my bicycling companion.”
He hadn’t intended to write a book. But his journal became full of interesting stories along the way. It eventually evolved into a book full of history tidbits, beautiful photos and first hand adventures.
As an avid cyclist for years, Green says taking this journey on a bicycle gave him a greater appreciation for what early settlers experienced.
Green: "I wanted to travel it more along the pace of the early pioneers. Slow it down. See what there was to see along the way. I was truly astonished to see how many evidences there are of early taverns, bridges and people whose ancestors remember that era and were able to tell me stories about it.”
Wilderness Road Odyssey is available from Pocahontas Press in Blacksburg and the RU bookstore.
Dec. 5, 2003
Media contact: Holly Hall, (540) 831-5324