Boone's Wilderness Road

by Archer Butler Hulbert

Leaving Beard’s, Walker and his men went, on the fourteenth, to Nicholas Welch’s, “where,” the Doctor writes, “we bought corn for our horses, and had some Victuals dress’d for Breakfast.” From here they climbed the Blue Ridge through Buford’s Gap, in Bedford County, through which the Norfolk and Western Railroad now passes. “The Ascent and Descent is so easie,” writes Walker, “that a Stranger would not know when he crossed the Ridge.” On the day after, they reached “the great Lick” near the present city of Roanoke, and continued up the trail on the following day to near the historic Inglis Ferry, not far from the present village of Blacksburg, Montgomery County, Virginia.

From this on, Walker’s route is not of importance to our study, as he missed the great trail which would have taken him to the pleasant meadows of Kentucky—though he struck it again at Cumberland Gap but did not follow it—and wandered over a circuitous route thus outlined by Daniel Bryan: “They started from low down in Virginia, traveled westwardly across Alleghany Mountains to Chissel’s Lead Mine, on New River; thence into the Holston Valley, thence over Walden’s Ridge and Powell’s Mountain into Powell’s Valley.... They then continued down the valley, leaving Cumberland Mountain a small distance on their right hand, until they came to Cumberland Gap.... At the foot of this mountain they fell into an Indian path leading from the Cherokee towns on Tennessee River to the Shawnee Indian towns on the Ohio, which path they followed down Yellow Creek to the old ford of Cumberland River.... Thence they went on the path down the river to the Flat Lick, eight miles; here they left the river, continued on the path, turning more north, crossing some of the head branches of the Kentucky River over a poor and hilly country, until they concluded there was no good country in the West. They then took an easterly course over the worst mountains and laurel thickets in the world.... They crossed the Laurel or Cumberland Mountain and fell into the Green brier country, almost starved to death ... and reached home with life only to pay for all their trouble and suffering.”

Regretting that this opinion of the final value of Walker’s journey cannot be gainsaid, it is yet of interest to follow his footsteps and learn what were some of the experiences of such early explorers as these.

On the twenty-sixth they “left the Inhabitans,” as Dr. Walker called the line of civilization, and were at last within the wild land where no settlers had yet come. On the night of the twenty-ninth the “Dogs were very uneasie,” and the next day, on Reedy Creek, a branch of the South Fork of the Holston, the tracks of a party of Indians were discovered, which explained the restlessness of the dogs. It is probably little realized in this day how valuable dogs were to explorers and immigrants. They were not only of service in giving warning of the approach of strangers, but were well-nigh indispensable in securing game and in searching for lost horses. Dr. Walker’s love for dogs is a tradition in the family, and his care of them on this journey is typical of the gentleman and the wise frontiersman. At the junction of Reedy Creek and the Holston—an historic spot in Tennessee—Walker found a gigantic elm tree, which measured twenty-five feet in circumference at a distance of three feet from the ground. Pioneers and explorers considered the study of trees a fine art. By this means they always judged the quality of the soil, and knew at a glance by the growth that stood on it the character of any piece of land. The diaries of all that old school of western adventurers contain frequent mention of trees which were an almost infallible criterion of the soil beneath. Washington had keen eyes for trees—as for everything else—as illustrated in the journal of his trip down the Ohio River in 1770. On the fourth of November he found a sycamore on the Great Kanawha, in comparison with which this first elm of Walker’s was insignificant. It measured, three feet from the ground, forty-five feet in circumference, and near by stood another measuring thirty-one feet around. Upon hearing about this larger tree, some one remarked that Washington might have told the truth about the cherry tree but he told a “whopper” about the sycamore. But it was not guess-work, for the record states clearly that the girth of the larger tree lacked two inches of being the complete forty-five feet. Trees along the Ohio grew to an immense size; an old Ohio River pilot affirms that in his boyhood a burned trunk of a sycamore stood on his father’s farm on the Little Muskingum, into which he has frequently driven a horse, turned it about, and come out again. General Harmar found on the Ohio a button-wood tree forty-two feet in circumference, which held forty men within its trunk.

On the seventh of April Dr. Walker writes: “It snowed most of the day. In the Evening our dogs caught a large He Bear, which before we could come up to shoot him had wounded a dog of mine, so that he could not Travel, and we carried him on Horseback, till he recovered.” On the thirteenth the party reached “Cave Gap,” which Walker named Cumberland Gap in honor of the “bloody Duke,” the hero of Culloden. “Just at the foot of the Hill is a Laurel Thicket.... On the South side is a plain Indian Road. On the top of the Ridge are Laurel Trees marked with crosses, others Blazed and several Figures on them.... This Gap may be seen at a considerable distance, and there is no other, that I know of, except one about two miles to the North of it, which does not appear to be so low as the other. The Mountain on the North Side of the Gap is very Steep and Rocky, but on the South side it is not So. We called it Steep Ridge.”

The party crossed the Cumberland River about four miles below the present village of Barbourville, Knox County, Kentucky, on the twenty-third of April. The river was named by Walker at this time. From this spot Walker, with two companions chosen by lot—Powell and Chew—went on a tour of exploration alone, leaving the others “to provide and salt some Bear, build an house, and plant some Peach Stones and Corn.”

Walker and his two companions floundered about the neighboring region for five days, not getting out of the mountainous country and not finding any good land. They crossed the Cumberland again, on the third day out, about twenty miles below the first crossing-place, and then returned up the river to the main party and found that the work he had ordered to be done was completed. “The People I had left had built an House 12 by 8, clear’d and broke up some ground, & planted Corn, and Peach Stones.”

Thus was raised, beside the tumbling Cumberland, on the farm now owned by George M. Faulkner four miles below Barbourville, Kentucky, the first house now recorded as built by white men in the fine territory between the Cumberland Mountains and the Ohio River, now the state of Kentucky. It was not an “improver’s cabin”—a log pen without roof—but a roofed house, and instituted what the English Loyal Land Company could claim to be a “settlement” in the territory which they had been granted. This was completed by the planting of corn and peach trees. The formality of this “settlement” is evinced by the fact that, two days later, the entire party moved on for further exploration, never again to return to their house or to reap their crops. It was twenty years before a house was erected in Kentucky for the permanent dwelling.

From this on, Dr. Walker’s journal is a long story of accidents and disappointments. One horse became lame, and “another had been bit in the Nose by a Snake.” “I rub’d the wounds with Bear’s oil, and gave him a drench of the same and another of the decoction of Rattle Snake root some time after.” On the same day “Colby Chew and his Horse fell down the Bank. I Bled and gave him Volatile drops, & he soon recovered.” On the first of May they reached Powell’s River. This was named from Ambrose Powell. During the journey Dr. Walker gave the name of each of his companions to rivers he discovered; none were given his name, though a mountain range to the north of Fort Chiswell still bears the name of Walker’s Mountain. On Powell’s River the party this day again struck the Indian path which later became the great highway to Kentucky. Again he was on the route that would have taken him to the famous meadows below the foothills of the mountains, and again he left it as he did when he chose to explore on the south side of Cumberland Mountain, instead of crossing at Pineville and following the trail northward. He did not cross Rockcastle River. J. Stoddard Johnson says: “This was the farthest western point reached by Doctor Walker. He did not cross the main Rockcastle River, and, therefore, was never on the waters of Salt or Green rivers, as claimed by some. A day or two’s travel to the west or northwest would have brought him to the fertile lands of Lincoln or Madison County, his description of which would have left no doubt of his having passed the watershed between the Rockcastle, the Salt, and the rivers to the westward.”[2]

Shoes formed an important item in the catalogue of necessaries for the early traveler’s outfit on the first traveled ways in America. Already Walker’s party, though they traveled largely by horse, had worn out the shoes with which they started, and on the eleventh of May under one of the great cliffs near Rockcastle River they set to work to make themselves new shoes out of elkskin. “When our Elk’s Skin was prepared,” writes Dr. Walker on the fourteenth, “we had lost every Awl that we brought out, and I made one with the Shank of an old Fishing hook, the other People made two of Horse Shoe Nails, and with these we made our Shoes and Moccosons.”