An Appalachian tale: Restoring Boone?s Wilderness Road

The bison were the first through Cumberland Gap, finding a break carved by wind and water in the Appalachian Mountain chain. Then Native Americans followed what they called the Warrior's Path when traveling between the Ohio Valley and the Shenandoah. In 1775, Daniel Boone was hired to mark the trail. Boone's Wilderness Road, which brought wagons and a flood of European settlers across the Appalachians, was "the way west" until the mid-19th century.

In 1908, 20th-century modernization came to the mountains in the form of a Federal demonstration project by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Public Roads. One of several "Object Lesson Roads" designed to prove the efficacy of new road building techniques, a 2.5 mile ribbon of crushed, compacted, and rolled limestone highway was constructed through Cumberland Mountain to link the towns of Middlesboro, KY, and Cumberland Gap, TN. As the number of vehicles and commercial traffic using the paved road grew, so did the danger. Before long, this section of U.S. Highway 25E was saddled with yet another - but tragic - nickname: Massacre Mountain. In 1940, Congress established Cumberland Gap National Historical Park to preserve the natural gap, or low point, on Cumberland Mountain because of its national significance in the early years of American westward expansion. Part of the dream for the park was to remove the highway and restore the Cumberland Gap and Wilderness Road to its 1780-1810 appearance. More than 60 years later, that dream has come true. The asphalt is gone. The traffic is gone. All that is left is the Gap-almost as Daniel Boone knew it.