WILDERNESS ROAD

WILDERNESS ROAD ran from eastern Virginia through the mountain pass known as the Cumberland Gap, to the interior of Kentucky and through to the Ohio country. This road, first used by wandering herds of buffalo and, later, Indian hunters, was later utilized by Daniel Boone for the Transylvania Company. Boone's company traveled from the treaty ground at Fort Watauga, by way of the Cumberland Gap, through the mountains and canelands of Kentucky to the Kentucky River, where they chose to settle the fortified town of Booneboro. At first, the road was little more than a footpath or packhorse trail. Spasmodic but insufficient measures were taken by the Virginia government to enlarge and improve the crowded thoroughfare. After Kentucky became a separate state, renewed efforts to grade, widen, and reinforce the road began. Sections of the road were leased to contractors who, in consideration of materials and labor furnished to maintain the road, were authorized to erect gates or turnpikes across it and collect tolls from travelers. For more than half a century after Boone's party traveled the road, the Wilderness Road was a principal avenue for the movement of eastern immigrants and others to and from the early West. Only the Ohio River offered an alternative route to the West. Thousands of settlers moved west through these converging highways. The Wilderness Road is still an important interstate roadway and constitutes a part of U.S. Route 25, known as the Dixie Highway.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chinn, George Morgan. Kentucky Settlement and Statehood, 1750– 1800. Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1975.

Faragher, John Mack. Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer. New York: Holt, 1992.

Krakow, Jere. Location of the Wilderness Road at the Cumberland Gap. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1987.

Speed, Thomas. The Wilderness Road: A Description of the Routes of Travel by which the Pioneers and Early Settlers First Came to Kentucky. Louisville, Ky.: J. P. Morton., 1886.

Samuel M.Wilson/h. s.

See alsoCumberland Gap .

Wilderness Road principal avenue of westward migration for U.S. pioneers from c.1790 to 1840, blazed in 1775 by the American frontiersman Daniel Boone and an advance party of the Transylvania Company . Feeders from the east (Richmond, Va.) and the north (Harpers Ferry, W.Va.) converged at Fort Chiswell in the Shenandoah valley. Boone's road ran southwest from there through the valley, then W across the Appalachian Mts. and through Cumberland Gap into the Kentucky bluegrass region and to the Ohio River. The road followed old buffalo traces and Native American paths, but much of it had to be cut through the wilderness. In the early years, many travelers fell victim to hostile Native Americans.

After Kentucky became a state in 1792, the road was widened to accommodate wagons. Private contractors, authorized to keep up sections of the road, charged tolls for its use. With the building of the National Road, the Wilderness Road was neglected and finally abandoned in the 1840s. Since 1926 the Wilderness Road has been a section of U.S. Route 25, the Dixie Highway.