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Archiver > RHEA > 1998-03 > 0890026327
From: PHHGENE <>
Subject: [RHEA-L] Re: Fw: [GRIMSLEY-L] Early American Trails and Roads: Part 2
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 00:32:07 EST
In a message dated 98-03-11 12:47:50 EST, you write:
<< THE WILDERNESS ROAD
The road through the Cumberland Gap was not officially named "the Wilderness
Road" until 1796 when it was widened enough to allow Conestoga Wagons to
travel on it. However, by the time Kentucky had become a state (1792),
estimates are that 70,000 settlers had poured into the area through the
Cumberland Gap, following this route. The Cumberland Gap was first called
Cave
Gap by the man who discovered it in 1750--Dr. Thomas Walker. Daniel Boone,
whose name is always associated with the Gap, reached it in 1769, passing
through it into the Blue Grass region, a hunting ground of Indian tribes. He
returned in 1775 with about 30 woodsmen with rifles and axes to mark out a
road through the Cumberland Gap, hired for the job by the Transylvania
Company. Boone's men completed the blazing of this first trail through the
Cumberland Mountains that same year, and established Boonesborough on the
Kentucky River. The Wilderness Road connected to the Great Valley Road which
came through the Shenandoah Valley from Pennsylvania. Some suggest the origin
of the Wilderness Road was at Fort Chiswell (Ft. Chissel) on the Great Valley
Road where roads converged from Philadelphia and Richmond. Others claimed the
beginning of the road to be at Sapling Grove (today's Bristol, VA) which lay
at the extreme southern end of the Great Valley Road since it was at that
point that the road narrowed, forcing travelers to abandon their wagons.
ZANE'S TRACE
In 1796 Colonel Ebenezer Zane petitioned Congress to authorize him to build a
road from Wheeling to Limestone (Maysville). Congress awarded him a contract
to complete a path between Wheeling and Limestone by January 1, 1797. The
contract required him to operate ferries across three rivers as soon as the
path opened. His only compensation was to be three 640-acre tracts, one at
each river crossing, to be surveyed at his own expense. Zane rounded up
equipment and a crew of workmen; with axes, they cut trees and blazed a
trail.
At first, Zane's Trace was merely a narrow dark path through the forest,
between a wall of ancient trees. Only horsemen could travel over it. For many
years, it was not wide enough for wagons. In 1804 the Legislature
appropriated
about fifteen dollars a mile to make a new twenty-foot road over Zane's
route.
But by modern standards, it was still a poor road because they left tree
stumps whenever they were under one foot high. The Trace was used by hundreds
of flatboatmen returning on foot or horseback to Pittsburgh and upriver towns
from downriver ports as far away as New Orleans. The road also became the
route from Wheeling to Maysville, and eventually it went on to Lexington and
Nashville.
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