From 1840 to 1848, the self-taught mountain road builder Solomon Jones (1802-1899) cut a toll road from Caesars Head, South Carolina, to Cedar Mountain, North Carolina. Because Jones had no formal training, local legend claimed he had blazed the trail with a hatchet while following the lead of a sow. The unpaved Jones Gap Road (largely abandoned by 1910) was the only direct route between Greenville County and Transylvania County, North Carolina, until in the 1930s an alternate route was chosen for the Geer Highway (U. S. Route 276).