The Unicoi Turnpike was the first vehicular route to connect North Georgia and Tennessee with the head of navigation on the Savannah River system. Beginning on the Tugalo River east of Toccoa, it ran this way across Nacoochee Valley, over the Blue Ridge through Unicoi Gap, and past Murphy, N.C., to Nine Mile Creek near Maryville, Tenn. In 1813, the Cherokees gave permission to a company of white men and Indians to open the route as a toll road, and Tennessee and Georgia granted charters to the enterprise. Before it opened as a road, the route had been part of a trading path from Augusta to the Cherokees of Tennessee.