Note: The following is part of a series of columns looking at the first road systems in Georgia and Bulloch County. Henry Southerland and Jerry Brown's "The Federal Road through Georgia, the Creek Nation, and Alabama" (1989) reveals that in 1806, Congress authorized President Thomas Jefferson to open a "plank road" to New Orleans. Under the 1805 Treaty of Washington, the Creeks along the route were encouraged to provide "houses of entertainment (which) ... became stagecoach stops ... about 16 miles apart (or) an average day's (foot) travel."