By the time of European exploration and settlement, the route had become well known and established as the fastest means of communication between the Cumberland Plateau, the Mississippi River, and the Gulf of Mexico settlements of Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans. In the early post-American Revolutionary War period of America's (south) westward expansion, the Trace was the return route for American flat-boat commerce between the territories of the upper and lower Ohio, Tennessee, and Cumberland River valleys. The Americans constructed flat-boats, loaded their commerce therein, and drifted upon those rivers, one-way south-southwestward to New Orleans, Louisiana. They would then sell their goods (including the salvageable logs of the flat-boats and including enslaved people), and return home via the Trace (for the middle section of their return trip), to as far away as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
