The Wilderness Road
London, Laurel County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
The Wilderness Road. Opened Kentucky and the West to rapid settlement and major development. First wagon road built by Kentucky (1796), Crab Orchard to Cumberland Gap. A principal highway, maintained as a turnpike "toll road" for 80 years. For more information, see ExploreKYHistory: Wilderness Road/Logan's Station
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
In 1796, the young state of Kentucky opened its first wagon road, transforming Daniel Boone's old buffalo-trace footpath into a route broad enough for settlers' loaded wagons. Running from Crab Orchard through London to the Cumberland Gap, the improved Wilderness Road carried a flood of pioneers into the Bluegrass country and beyond, and for eight decades it was maintained as a toll turnpike. What had once been a rugged trace for horseback and foot travel became the great overland artery that stitched the trans-Appalachian West to the settled East.
Why it matters
The Wilderness Road was the single most important gateway for American settlement west of the Appalachians, funneling hundreds of thousands of pioneers into Kentucky and the Ohio Valley and helping turn a frontier into states.
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Related events
- · Opening of the Wilderness Road (1796)
Themes & tags
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