Burkhalter Road takes its name from the Burkhalter family, formerly spelled Burgholser, a Salzburger family that immigrated to the American colonies. In 1768, Rudolph Burkhalter received 400 acres on the south bank of the Ogeechee River where it met an important Indian trading path that formed part of an ancient transportation network stretching from modern-day North Carolina to the Gulf of Mexico. Such paths often followed animal trails, linked Indian villages, and served trade, war, and access to resources such as rivers, game, salt, and flint, usually keeping to ridges and drainage divides and crossing rivers at rocky shoals or shallow fords. This trail was unusual in the region because, unlike most Indian trails that ran east to west between inland communities and the coast, it cut across the interior and crossed several rivers. The earliest reference to part of it appeared on Oglethorpe’s first map of Georgia, marking the route the Creeks used to go to war against the Florida Indians. The Burkhalters, like many settlers, used the established trail, and because it crossed the Ogeechee at its shallowest point on their land, they operated a ferry there and later built a toll bridge, making the crossing an important local thoroughfare. In the nineteenth century, Burkhalter Road also carried stagecoach traffic, and tradition places a way station at the intersection of Burkhalter and Old Register roads in Statesboro. As public roads developed, the bridge declined and was condemned around 1919. The name Burkhalter once applied to a long section of the old Indian trail through what are now Screven, Bulloch, Evans, and Tattnall Counties, but only in Bulloch County has the road kept the Burkhalter name.