Boone's Wilderness Road

Name: Boone's Wilderness Road
Author: Hulbert, Archer Butler

Hulbert, Archer Butler

Kentucky -- History; Roads -- United States; Wilderness Road

Miles
    "From Charlotte Court-House
  to Campbell Court-House,               41
  To New London,                         13
  To Colonel James Callaway's,            3
  To Liberty,                            13
  To Colonel Flemming's,                 28
  To Big Lick,                            2
  To Mrs. Kent's,                        20
  To English's Ferry,                    20
  To Carter's,                           13
  To Fort Chissel,                       12
  To the Stone-mill,                     11
  To Adkins',                            16
  To Russell Place,                      16
  To Greenaway's,                        14
  To Washington Court-House,              6
  To the Block-house,                    35
  To Farriss's,                           5
  To Clinch River,                       12
  To Scott's Station,                    12
  To Cox's at Powell River,              10
  To Martin's Station,                    2
  To--[manuscript defaced]
  To Cumberland Mountain                  3
  To Cumberland River,                   15
  To Flat Lick,                           9
  To Stinking Creek,                      2
  To Richland Creek,                      7
  To Raccoon Spring,                     14
  To Laurel River,                        2
  To Hazel Patch,                        15
  To Rockcastle,                         10
  To--[manuscript defaced]."

The foregoing itineraries afford us some conception of the settlements
and "improvements" that sprang up along the winding thoroughfare from
Virginia to Kentucky. The writer has sought with some care to know more
of these--of the modes of travel, the entertainment which was afforded
along the road to men and beasts, and the social relation of the greater
settlements in Virginia and Kentucky to this thin line of human lives
across the continent. Very little information has been secured. It is
plain that the great immigration to Kentucky would have been out of the
question had there been no means of succor and assistance along the
road. There were many who gained their livelihood as pioneer innkeepers
and provisioned along Boone's Road. Among the very few of these of whom
any record is left, Captain Joseph Martin is perhaps the most prominent
and most worthy of remembrance. Martin's "cabin" or "station," as it is
variously termed, occupied a strategic point in far-famed Powell's
Valley, one hundred and eighty miles west of Inglis Ferry, twenty miles
east of Cumberland Gap and about one hundred and thirty miles southeast
of Crab Orchard and Boonesborough. Captain Martin was Virginia Agent
for Indian affairs, and was the most prominent man in the scattered
settlements in Powell's Valley, where he was living at the time of the
founding of Boonesborough. Later he made his headquarters at Long Island
in North Carolina. It is plain from Colonel Henderson's journal that

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Boone's Wilderness Road

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