Historic Highways of America, Vol. 6

Boone's Wilderness Road

The naming of our highways is an interesting study. Like roads the world over they are usually known by two namesthe destinations to which they lead. The famous highway through New York state is known as the Genesee Road in the eastern half of the state and as the Albany Road in the western portion. In a number of cities through which it passesUtica, Syracuse, etc.it is Genesee Street. This path in the olden time was the great road to the famed Genesee country. The old Forbes Road across Pennsylvania soon lost its earliest name; but it is preserved at its termination, for the Pittsburger of today goes to the Carnegie Library on the Forbes Street car line. The Maysville Pikeas unknown today as it was of national prominence three quarters of a century agoleading across Ohio from Wheeling to Maysville (Lime[Pg 12]stone) and on to Lexington, is known in Kentucky as the Zanesville Pike; from that city in Ohio the road branched off from the old National Road. The Glade Road was the important branch of the Pennsylvania or Pittsburg Road which led through the Glades of the Alleghenies to the Youghiogheny. One of the most singular names for a road was that of the Shun Pike between Watertown and Erie, in northwestern Pennsylvania. The large traffic over the old French RoadMarins Portage Roadbetween these points on Lake Erie and French Creek necessitated, early in the nineteenth century, a good road-bed. Accordingly a road company took hold of the route and improved itplacing toll gates on it for recompensation. Those who refused to pay toll broke open a parallel route nearby, which was as free as it was rough. It became known as the Shun Pike because those who traversed it shunned the toll road. Few roads named from their builders, such as Braddock, Forbes, Bouquet, Wayne, Ebenezer Zane, Marin, and Boone preserved the oldtime name. Indeed nearly all our[Pg 13] roads have lost the ancient name, a fact that should be sincerely mourned. The Black Swamp has been drained, therefore there can be now no Black Swamp Road. There are now no refugees and the Refugees Road is lost not only to sight but to the memory of most. Perhaps there is but one road in the central West which is commonly known and called by the old Indian name; this is the Tuscarawas Path, a modern highway in Eastern Ohio which was widened and made a white mans road by the first white army that ever crossed the Ohio River into what is now the State of Ohio. One roadwaythe Wilderness Road to Kentucky from Virginia and Tennessee, the longest, blackest, hardest road of pioneer days in Americaholds the oldtime name with undiminished loyalty and is true today to every gloomy description and vile epithet that was ever written or spoken of it. It was broken open for white mans use by Daniel Boone from the Watauga settlement on the Holston River, Tennessee, to the mouth of Otter Creek on the Kentucky River in the month preceding the outbreak[Pg 14] of open revolution at Lexington and Concord. It was known as Boones Trail, the Kentucky Road, the road to Caintuck, or the Virginia Road, but its common name was the Wilderness Road. A wilderness of laurel thickets lay between the Kentucky settlements and Cumberland Gap and was the most desolate country imaginable. The name was transferred to the road that passed through it. It seems right that the brave frontiersman who opened this route to white men should be remembered by this act; and for a title to this volume Boones Wilderness Road has been selected. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 41143
Author: Hulbert, Archer Butler
Release Date: Oct 22, 2012
Format: eBook
Language: English