The Old Federal Road linked Georgia and Tennessee across the Cherokee Nation as the earliest thoroughfare on that route. Permission to use it was granted informally by the Indians in 1803 and formally by the 1805 Treaty of Tellico, Tenn. It became the first vehicular thoroughfare west of the Chattahoochee, the earliest postal route in this part of the state, a leading emigrant trace to Tennessee and North Alabama, and an artery along which Kentucky and Tennessee stockmen drove animals to southeastern markets.