Coffee Road

After establishing the counties of Early, Irwin, and Appling in 1819, the Georgia General Assembly approved construction of the road December 23, 1822, with funds of $1,500.

[3] The trail was built in the early 1820s and ran from Jacksonville, Georgia, through Metcalf and across the Florida border.

[4] The trail was about 3 ft (0.91 m) wide, cleared, dug, and leveled by enslaved African-American laborers.

[4] Many pioneer families, including Hall, Folsom, Roundtree, Parrish, and Knight, migrated to claim land for farms and plantations.

They brought enslaved African Americans or bought them through the domestic slave trade to work the cotton plantations.