question: What type of wagon inspired the dominant form of transportation on the improved trail through the Great Appalachian Valley from Pennsylvania to North Carolina?
answer: Conestoga wagon
context: Title: Covered wagon
  Passage: The covered wagon was long the dominant form of transport in pre-industrial America.  With roots in the heavy Conestoga wagon developed for the rough, undeveloped roads and paths of the colonial East, the covered wagon spread west with American migration.  Heavily relied upon along such travel routes as the Great Wagon Road and the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails, it carried settlers seeking land, gold, and new futures ever further west.
  Title: Great Appalachian Valley
  Passage: The Great Valley, also called the Great Appalachian Valley or Great Valley Region, is one of the major landform features of eastern North America.  It is a gigantic trough—a chain of valley lowlands—and the central feature of the Appalachian Mountain system.  The trough stretches about 1200 mi from Quebec to Alabama and has been an important north-south route of travel since prehistoric times.
  Title: Shenandoah Valley
  Passage: The Shenandoah Valley is a geographic valley and cultural region of western Virginia and the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia in the United States.  The valley is bounded to the east by the Blue Ridge Mountains, to the west by the eastern front of the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians (excluding Massanutten Mountain), to the north by the Potomac River and to the south by the James River.  The cultural region covers a larger area that includes all of the valley plus the Virginia highlands to the west, and the Roanoke Valley to the south.  It is physiographically located within the Ridge and Valley province and is a portion of the Great Appalachian Valley.
  Title: Cumberland Valley
  Passage: The Cumberland Valley is a northern constituent valley of the Great Appalachian Valley, within the Atlantic Seaboard watershed in Pennsylvania and Maryland.  The Appalachian Trail crosses through the valley.
  Title: Martinsburg Formation
  Passage: The Ordovician Martinsburg Formation (Om) is a mapped bedrock unit in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia.  It is named for the town of Martinsburg, West Virginia for which it was first described.  It is the dominant rock formation of the Great Appalachian Valley in New Jersey (where it is called Kittatinny Valley and Pennsylvania (in the Lehigh Valley and Lebanon Valley).
  Title: Blue Ridge Mountains
  Passage: The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains range.  This province consists of northern and southern physiographic regions, which divide near the Roanoke River gap.  The mountain range is located in the eastern United States, starting at its southernmost portion in Georgia, then ending northward in Pennsylvania.  To the west of the Blue Ridge, between it and the bulk of the Appalachians, lies the Great Appalachian Valley, bordered on the west by the Ridge and Valley province of the Appalachian range.
  Title: Hagerstown Valley
  Passage: Hagerstown Valley is located in Maryland in the United States.  It is part of the Great Appalachian Valley, which continues northward as Cumberland Valley in Pennsylvania, and southward as Shenandoah Valley in West Virginia and Virginia.
  Title: Great Wagon Road
  Passage: The Great Wagon Road was an improved trail through the Great Appalachian Valley from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, and from there to Georgia in colonial America.
  Title: Shawangunk Ridge
  Passage: The Shawangunk Ridge , also known as the Shawangunk Mountains or The Gunks, is a ridge of bedrock in Ulster County, Sullivan County and Orange County in the state of New York, extending from the northernmost point of New Jersey to the Catskill Mountains.  Shawangunk Ridge is the continuation of the long, easternmost ridge of the Appalachian Mountains; the ridge is known as Kittatinny Mountain in New Jersey, and as Blue Mountain as it continues through Pennsylvania.  This ridge constitutes the western border of the Great Appalachian Valley.
  Title: Great Indian Warpath
  Passage: The Great Indian Warpath (GIW)—also known as the Great Indian War and Trading Path, or the Seneca Trail—was that part of the network of trails in eastern North America developed and used by Native Americans which ran through the Great Appalachian Valley.  The system of footpaths (the Warpath branched off in several places onto alternate routes and over time shifted westward in some regions) extended from what is now upper New York state to deep within Alabama.  Various Indians traded and made war along the trails, including the Catawba, numerous Algonquian tribes, the Cherokee, and the Iroquois Confederacy.  The British traders' name for the route was derived from combining its name among the northeastern Algonquian tribes, "Mishimayagat" or "Great Trail", with that of the Shawnee and Delaware, "Athawominee" or "Path where they go armed".
citations: Covered wagon Great Wagon Road