BOONE TRACE TRAIL WILDERNESS ROAD

During the last quarter of the 18th Century, more than 200,000 pioneers visited Kentucky by following the Wilderness Road and Boone Trace. Boone Trace, the trail blazed by Daniel Boone and his thirty “axemen” in March and April of 1775 from North Carolina, through the Cumberland Gap to Boonesborough. No other road is of greater historical significance to the founding of Kentucky and opening of the west than “that little road.” And it comes right up through the heart of Kentucky! Over 200,000 pioneers came over the “Wilderness Road,” enduring severe hardships, including Indian attack, cold, and hunger. In 1958, the National Park Service opened the original route of the “Great Kentucky Road” through the gap, to be used as an interpretive trail.