While English explorers and traders were probably using the Wachesa Trail as early as the 1690s, the first documented crossing was that of Colonel George Chicken in 1725. Chicken, a South Carolina emissary travelling to the Overhill towns in hopes of obtaining their support in the colony's ongoing struggles with the Creek tribe, left Little Tellico in the Middle towns at 10am on July 24, 1725 and proceeded approximately across the southern Unicois to a campsite "about five Miles Short of a place called the Beaver Dam." Chicken's party departed at 5am the following morning and arrived at the village of Great Tellico at 3pm, having travelled another .