About one to two miles south of the Rock Hawk site ran the Okfuskee Trail, also known as the Upper Creek Trading Path. The Okfuskee Trail is the predecessor of today’s Historic Piedmont Scenic Byway (Georgia Highway 16), and the Rock Hawk area is one of the Byway’s attractions.
Long before European settlement, Native American trails criss-crossed the Southeast. When the English founded Charles Town (present-day Charleston, SC) in the late 1600s, the Upper Creek Trading Path became an important route in the profitable trade for deerskins. The settlement of Augusta on the Savannah River became an important center in the Indian trade in the mid 1700s. The western destination of traders on the path was Okfuskee, on the Tallapoosa River, located in present-day eastern central Alabama. Okfuskee was a principal town of the Upper Creeks.
After the Creeks were defeated in the Red Stick War of 1813-1814, they lost more of their homeland. Okfuskee became part of the new state of Alabama. The United States government sent the Creeks across the Mississippi River to live in present-day Oklahoma, and the Okfuskee Trail passed into history. Parts of the Trail ultimately became the paved roads of today.