Trading Path historical marker

Sometimes, we forget where we came from and what Charlotte was before it was skyscrapers and Interstate highways. It grew out of being a trading hub between early settlers and Native Americans. This historical marker in Pineville (it’s right in front of the Waldhorn and near the President James K. Polk site) reads:
Colonial trading route, dating from the seventeenth century, from Petersburg, Virginia, to the Catawba Indians in Carolina, passed here.
For those who might not know, Petersburg is a solid four hours by highway from here. How’d you like to travel 280 miles (as the crow flies!) on horseback without your GPS?
Part of the story on the web site reads:
In North Carolina, the early history of the colony is replete with stories of the reliance by colonists upon Indian trade and trading routes, and the consequent establishment of villages where they engaged in bartering. Such routes were well known, well marked, and well trodden. The Occaneechi Path, stretching from Petersburg, Virginia, to the Waxhaws region, was one of a hundred such trails running throughout the state and the southeast. But the Trading Path was the central highway, the most fabled route, the interstate of its day. (Its course approximates that of Interstate 85.)