Two-Heel Drive, a Hiking Blog

The first settlement of present-day Winston-Salem began in an abandoned trapper’s cabin 20 years before the American Revolution at the site of Historic Bethabara Park, which commemorates the Bethabara settlement of 1753. Most of the park is populated with the foundations of old buildings or modern-day reproductions, but it also has at least four miles of nature trails that are well worth a visit in fall and winter. The trails are mostly flat and partly paved; my favorite section uses floating boardwalks to traverse the edge of a marsh — things get interesting when the boards sink below water level as you walk on them.

The settlers were German Christian missionaries commonly called “the Moravians” because most of the original members of the sect came from Moravia, a region near Bohemia (now Czechoslovakia). While most Americans have heard of the Quakers and the Puritans, few know much about the Moravians, a major historical injustice: Moravians were the first Protestants, a century before Martin Luther. How far ahead of their time were they? Well, the man credited with inspiring the creation of their religion was declared a heretic by the Catholic church and burned at the stake in 1415. Three hundred years later, a German noble granted sanctuary to a collection of Moravian believers, who started sending missionaries around the globe a few decades later. (more…)