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Routes Across the Early Colonies

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Routes Across the Early Colonies

Use geography clues to explain travel routes and settlement choices.

Read about routes and sites

Read the passage. Think about how land and water affected where people traveled and settled.

Following Water and Finding Land

1During the 1500s and 1600s, European explorers crossed the Atlantic Ocean to reach North America. Ocean travel was difficult, so ships often followed coastlines and entered bays, sounds, and river mouths. Water could carry people and supplies more easily than rough land trails. Explorers also used rivers to travel inland, although rapids, shoals, and waterfalls could stop boats.

2Geography influenced the places where colonists built settlements. Jamestown was founded in 1607 along the James River in the Chesapeake region. The river gave ships access to the settlement and provided a route for moving supplies. The site was also near lands used by the Powhatan people, a powerful Native political alliance. Relations between the colonists and Powhatan communities changed over time and included both trade and conflict.

3In 1620, the English Separatists known as the Pilgrims established Plymouth near a harbor in present-day Massachusetts. A harbor offered ships a place to anchor and helped connect the settlement to Atlantic travel. Farther south, Philadelphia was founded in 1682 near the meeting of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. Its location offered water routes in several directions.

4The Appalachian Mountains formed a major barrier west of the coastal plain. Trails through gaps and valleys could guide travelers, but crossing the mountains was slower and harder than traveling by water or along level ground. For this reason, many early English settlements were concentrated near the Atlantic coast and its rivers. These sites were not empty lands: Native nations already lived throughout the region, and colonists' arrival changed the lives and lands of those communities.

1.
What is the main idea of the passage?
Question 1 options
2.
Why would an explorer enter a river mouth after crossing the Atlantic?
Question 2 options
3.
Which geographic feature most directly helped ships reach Jamestown?
Question 3 options
4.
How did Plymouth's harbor and Philadelphia's rivers offer a similar advantage?
Question 4 options
5.
Underline the sentence that best supports the idea that mountains could slow westward travel.

Use a route model

Study the bar graph. It shows the number of days in a classroom route model from the Atlantic to four colonial sites. The model gives shorter times to routes with easier water or coastal access; it is not a record of exact historical travel times.

Days in Route Models to Colonial Sites0123456JamestownPlymouthPhiladelphiaNew AmsterdamColonial siteModel days
6.
According to the route model, which site had the fewest model days?

7.
Which explanation best connects the graph to the passage?
Question 7 options
8.
Sort each feature by how it affected travel in the passage.
9.
Underline the graph detail that is evidence that New Amsterdam had the easiest modeled route of the four sites.

Apply the geographic ideas

Use the passage and graph to reason about new settlement and route choices.

10.
A group plans to build a settlement far inland, west of the Appalachian Mountains, with no river route or mountain gap nearby. Which problem would geography most likely create?
Question 10 options
11.
Two possible settlement sites are available. Site A is beside a navigable river near the coast. Site B is on a high, steep ridge far from a river. Why might colonists have preferred Site A?
Question 11 options
12.
Underline the passage sentence that gives evidence that early English settlements often stayed near the Atlantic coast.

13.
Which route would most likely help an explorer move from the Atlantic toward the interior?
Question 13 options
14.
Explain how at least two geographic features influenced exploration routes. Use evidence from the passage.
15.
Make a claim about why many colonists settled near the Atlantic coast and its rivers. Support your claim with two details from the passage or graph.