Stan Hyatt:
It's a natural north-south corridor that's moved commerce and people. I suspect if you went back to the history, it was an old drover's route a hundred years ago, where people drove cattle and pigs and turkeys and things like they did down along the Buncombe Turnpike, down the French Broad River. I think they probably did the same thing across Sam's Gap, and so commerce has moved. It's been a natural corridor for over a hundred years.

- Stan Hyatt, Resident Engineer on the I-26 project and Madison County resident

Interview with Rob Amberg, November 30, 2000. Southern Oral History Project, UNC.
Click here to access the full interview.