Three Notch Road is a 233-mile-long (375 km) historic road mostly in the US state of Alabama that runs from Pensacola, Florida, to Fort Mitchell in Russell County, Alabama.
Letters exchanged between Quartermaster General Thomas Jesup and the Assistant Quartermaster General in Pensacola, Captain Daniel E. Burch, indicate its origin: in June, Burch recommends the construction of a wagon trail, and in September Jesup gives him the authority to start surveying, after he finishes the survey for the Federal Road (the part between Pensacola and St. Augustine, Florida) that opened up the lands of the Creek people.
The United States Department of War, led by John C. Calhoun, funded it as a "military emergency measure": U.S. Army troops had to supply Fort Mitchell (which protected settlers) overland, through the homeland of the Creek Indians, since the Chattahoochee River was not yet navigable for steamboats.
[1] The exact route is not known; for instance, whether it ran through Andalusia, Alabama, is not clear.
[5] Peter A. Brannon, of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, reported that locals remembered seeing the three notches on various old trees along the road, south of Troy.