"year-round recreation including picnicking, camping, hiking and bird-watching. Levi Jackson Wilderness Road State Park Levi Jackson Wilderness Road State Park is a state park located just south of London, Kentucky in Laurel County. The park encompasses and includes a section of the Wilderness Road that early settlers used to reach Kentucky. The park is named for Levi Jackson, an early Kentucky pioneer. It serves as both a recreational and historic park. The historic Wilderness Road was the main route used by settlers for more than 50 years to reach Kentucky from Virginia. In 1775, Daniel Boone blazed a trail for"
"the Kentucky wilderness. In 1775, Richard Henderson, a prominent judge from North Carolina, hired Daniel Boone to blaze what became known as the Wilderness Road, which went through the Cumberland Gap and into central Kentucky. Squire Boone accompanied his brother and 30 others, assisting in the settlement of Boone's Station (present-day Boonesborough). In Spring 1779, after the siege of Boonesborough, where Squire had a rifle ball cut out of his shoulder, he moved his family to the settlement at the Falls of the Ohio that would become Louisville. In 1780, he brought 13 families to ""Painted Stone"", a tract of"
"Despite some resistance from American Indian tribes such as the Shawnee, in 1775, Boone blazed his Wilderness Road from North Carolina and Tennessee through Cumberland Gap in the Cumberland Mountains into Kentucky. There, he founded the village of Boonesborough, Kentucky, one of the first American settlements west of the Appalachians. Before the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 Americans migrated to Kentucky/Virginia by following the route marked by Boone. Boone served as a militia officer during the Revolutionary War (1775–83), which, in Kentucky, was fought primarily between the American settlers and British-allied Indians, who hoped to expel the"
"pioneers to the Northwest Territory established Marietta, Ohio as the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory. In 1775, Daniel Boone blazed a trail for the Transylvania Company from Virginia through the Cumberland Gap into central Kentucky. It was later lengthened to reach the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville. The Wilderness Road was steep and rough, and it could only be traversed on foot or horseback, but it was the best route for thousands of settlers moving into Kentucky. In some areas they had to face Indian attacks. In 1784 alone, Indians killed over 100 travelers on the"
"founding of any Kentucky settlements. Afterward, Boone was hired to blaze what became known as the Wilderness Road, which went from Virginia through the Cumberland Gap and into central Kentucky. During this trail-blazing expedition, Boone and his party suffered several Indian attacks. Along with a party of about thirty workers, Boone marked a path to the Kentucky River, where he established Boonesborough (near present-day Lexington, Kentucky), which was intended to be the capital of Transylvania. Unknown to Boone, Henderson led another expedition following in Boone's tracks, widening the path so travellers could bring through wagons. In addition to Boonesborough, other"
"hired Boone to travel to the Cherokee towns in present North Carolina and Tennessee and inform them of an upcoming meeting. In the 1775 treaty, Henderson purchased the Cherokee claim to Kentucky to establish a colony called Transylvania. Afterwards, Henderson hired Boone and Cutbirth to blaze what became known as the Wilderness Road, which went through the Cumberland Gap and into central Kentucky. Along with a party of about 30 workers, Boone and Cutbirth marked a path to the Kentucky River, where they founded Boonesborough. Other settlements, notably Harrodsburg, were also established at this time. Despite occasional Indian attacks, Boone"
"Wilderness Road The Wilderness Road was one of two principal routes used by colonial and early national era settlers to reach Kentucky from the East. Although this road goes through the Cumberland Gap into southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee, the other (more northern route) is sometimes called the ""Cumberland Road"" because it started in Fort Cumberland in Maryland. Despite Kentucky Senator Henry Clay's advocacy of this route, early in the 19th century, the northern route was selected for the National Road, connecting near Washington, Pennsylvania into the Ohio Valley of northern Kentucky and Ohio. In 1775, Daniel Boone blazed a"
"Daniel Boone Daniel Boone (September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer, explorer, woodsman, and frontiersman, whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now Kentucky. It was still considered part of Virginia but was on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains from most European-American settlements. As a young adult, Boone supplemented his farm income by hunting and trapping game, and selling their pelts in the fur market. Through this occupational interest, Boone first learned the easy routes to the area."
"Illinois. He and a band of almost forty men founded the first permanent settlement in Kentucky on June 16, 1774, although it had to be abandoned the same year. Restored in 1775, the community was known as Harrodstown and then Harrodsburg in his honor. In 1792, Harrod disappeared while on a hunting trip in the wilderness. While it is possible that he was killed by Indians or became ill and died of natural causes, some have suggested that he took a ""wilderness divorce"" from his wife, while his family maintained that he was murdered by one of his companions while"
"with John Oldham by the Indians off Block Island were his nephews, John and Thomas Oldham. Thomas Oldham Jr. stayed in Massachusetts. John migrated to the Virginia colony and became a significant land owner. His descendants subsequently settled in North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri and Kentucky. They were some of the original settlers of Kentucky. Jessie Oldham came through the Cumberland Gap with Daniel Boone and helped him blaze the Wilderness Trail and plot and build Ft. Boonesborough. He was also credited with being one of the first white men to plant a crop in Kentucky. John Oldham (colonist) John Oldham"
"became the first to explore and settle Kentucky, opening the way for countless others to follow. In fact, other Americans had explored and settled Kentucky before Boone, as debunkers in the 20th century often pointed out, but Boone came to symbolize them all, making him what historian Michael Lofaro called ""the founding father of westward expansion"". In the 19th century, when Native Americans were being displaced from their lands and confined on reservations, Boone's image was often reshaped into the stereotype of the belligerent, Indian-hating frontiersman which was then popular. In John A. McClung's ""Sketches of Western Adventure"" (1832), for"
"and the North Carolina colony. The Transylvania Colony was primarily located in what is now the central and eastern parts of Kentucky. The American pioneer and frontier explorer Daniel Boone was hired by Henderson to establish the Wilderness Road going through the Cumberland Gap and into southeastern Kentucky. Transylvania officially ceased to exist as a government entity in 1776 when the Virginia General Assembly invalidated the Transylvania Purchase. In the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the Iroquois ceded their claims on lands south of the Ohio River to the Kingdom of Great Britain. Although they claimed sovereignty over much of"
"in the area forced these new settlers to retreat. They returned the following year, as Boone built the Wilderness Road and established Fort Boonesborough at a site near Boonesborough, Kentucky. The Native Americans allocated a tract of land between the Ohio River and the Cumberland River for the Transylvania Land Company. In 1776, the colony of Virginia declared the Transylvania Land Company illegal and created the county of Kentucky in Virginia from the land involved. Col. George Rogers Clark made the first Anglo-American settlement in the vicinity of modern-day Louisville in 1778, during the American Revolutionary War. He was conducting"
"James Harbeson James Harbeson was an early American settler and founder of Harbeson's Station, now Perryville, Kentucky. During the final stages of the American Revolution, Harbeson and a group of settlers crossed the blue mountains of Virginia into the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. Finding a suitable site alongside the Chaplin River, the settlers built a fort next to a spring and cave. Local legend holds that Harbeson disappeared after failing to reach the cave, which was used for defense against hostile Indians; his head, however, was discovered about a mile from the fort, likely severed in an attack. Dr. Jefferson"
"Benjamin Kelsey Benjamin or Ben Kelsey (1813 Kentucky – February 19, 1889 Los Angeles, California) was an early American pioneer of California with his brothers Andy and Sam Kelsey. He was a founder, often with one or more of his brothers, of several settlements in California. He was born in Kentucky in 1813. He and his wife Nancy Kelsey arrived in Alta California in the Bartleson–Bidwell Party in 1841. In 1844, he brought a party of immigrants including his father David and brother Samuel from Oregon on the Siskiyou Trail to Sutter's Fort. With his brothers he participated in the"
"through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. It was later lengthened, following Native American trails, to the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville. The Wilderness Road was rough and steep. In the early days of the trail, it could only be traveled on foot or horseback. As more travelers passed, the road improved and horse-drawn wagons were able to follow the trail. In spite of the conditions, thousands of people used it. Many of their descendants still live in Kentucky including members of the McNitt Company, a group of pioneers who were attacked by Native Americans on October 3, 1786. The"
"Ebenezer Zane Ebenezer Zane (October 7, 1747 – 1811) was an American pioneer, road builder and land speculator. Born in what is now Moorefield, West Virginia (which was then in the colony of Virginia), Zane established the settlement known as Fort Henry in Wheeling, Virginia (present-day West Virginia) on the Ohio River. Zane is also famous for blazing the trail known as Zane's Trace. Ebenezer Zane was one of six children born to William Andrew Zane and his wife, Nancy Ann Nolan. He had four brothers: Silas (born 1745), Andrew (born 1749), Jonathan (born about 1750), and Isaac (born 1753),"
"and Civil wars. In 1775, Daniel Boone and thirty ax-men built the Indian path into a road, part of the Wilderness Road between the Great Valley of Virginia and the Alleghenies, on his quest to the Kentucky River. This section of the Wilderness Road extended north from the Long Island of the Holston River in Tennessee towards the well-known Cumberland Gap at the boundary of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. The establishment of the Wilderness Road through the gap also brought pioneer settlers and tradesmen looking for passage to Kentucky and west. Scott County and the surrounding area praise the gap"
"killed and scalped, and his body was mutilated. Calloway County, Kentucky, was named after Callaway. Richard Callaway Richard Callaway or Richard Calloway (June 14, 1717 – March 8, 1780) was a longhunter and early settler of Kentucky. Born in Caroline County, Virginia, Callaway joined Daniel Boone in 1775 in marking the Wilderness Road into central Kentucky, becoming one of the founders of Boonesborough, Kentucky. He took part in organizing the short-lived colony of Transylvania. In 1776, two of Callaway's daughters, along with Daniel Boone's Jemima, were kidnapped outside Boonesborough by Native Americans. Callaway led one of parties in the rescue"
"County, Kentucky from Hazel Patch to Crab Orchard, was known as ""Skaggs Trace,"" named after Henry Skaggs. In June 1775, Skaggs, along with Valentine Harman, a member of the Transylvania Convention at Boonesborough in May, led Colonel Thomas Slaughter to the Green River country of Kentucky to explore that land on behalf of Richard Henderson's Transylvania Company, which had recently purchased the area along with a large portion of Central Kentucky. Skaggs permanently settled in Kentucky in 1789 on Pitman's Creek in Barren County. He is credited with the rescue of the kidnapped pioneer Jenny Wiley from a Native American"
"George Bowman (pioneer) George Bowman (1699–1768) was an 18th-century American pioneer, landowner and a prominent Indian fighter in the early history of the Virginia Colony. He, along with his father-in-law Jost Hite, was one of the first to explore and settle Shenandoah Valley. His estate, on which Fort Bowman was founded, was one of the earliest homes to be built in Shenandoah Valley and is the site of present-day Strasburg, Virginia. Four of his sons, Joseph, Isaac, Abraham and Johannes, also became well-known frontiersmen in Kentucky during the late 1770s. His great-grandson, John Bryan Bowman founded Kentucky University and Agricultural"
"Richard Callaway Richard Callaway or Richard Calloway (June 14, 1717 – March 8, 1780) was a longhunter and early settler of Kentucky. Born in Caroline County, Virginia, Callaway joined Daniel Boone in 1775 in marking the Wilderness Road into central Kentucky, becoming one of the founders of Boonesborough, Kentucky. He took part in organizing the short-lived colony of Transylvania. In 1776, two of Callaway's daughters, along with Daniel Boone's Jemima, were kidnapped outside Boonesborough by Native Americans. Callaway led one of parties in the rescue of the girls. His nephew Flanders Callaway later married Jemima Boone. In April 1777, Callaway"
"John Peter Salling John Peter Salling (sometimes Saling, Sailing, Saline or Salley) was born in Germany in the early 18th century and traveled to America as a young man, settling in Augusta County, Virginia. He was an explorer who led expeditions from Canada to Florida, and is credited with being the first white man to set foot in western Kentucky. As Kentucky's state historian, James Klotter, explains in ""A New History of Kentucky"", ""No one can name with certainty the first man of European descent who explored Kentucky. He may have been one of the anonymous, far-ranging French ""coureurs du"
"hired by the Transylvania Company, arrived in the region leading a company of men to widen the path through the gap to make settlement of Kentucky and Tennessee easier. On his arrival Boone discovered that Martin had beaten him to Powell Valley, where Martin and his men were clearing land for their own settlement – the westernmost settlement in English colonial America at the time. By the 1790s the trail that Boone and his men built had been widened to accommodate wagon traffic and sometimes became known as the Wilderness Road. Several American Civil War engagements occurred in and around"
"Oklahoma. Ancient Indian trails led through the county at the time. Most of the settlers entered the county over what was called Charley's Trace, an Indian trail that came across east from the Mississippi River and entered the hills about where Leverett is now located. Here the trail merged with a trail from the south and passed near the present site of Charleston. Colonel Thomas Bailey came from Kentucky and formed the first European-American settlement on the north fork of the creek, which was about five miles to the northeast. He was later joined by James Bailey, Samuel Caruthers, William"
"the river—agreed not to hunt south of it. In 1774, Harrod's Town became the first white permanent settlement in Kentucky. Harrod's Town, named after James Harrod, was founded by the order of the British royal Governor of Virginia John Murray, the 4th Earl of Dunmore. James Harrod led an expedition to survey the bounds of land promised by the British crown to soldiers who served in the French and Indian War. Leaving from Fort Redstone, Harrod and 37 men traveled down the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers to the mouth of the Kentucky River, eventually crossing Salt River into what is"
"accompanied by his sons, explored the Southern Appalachian region and in 1796 established one of the first settlements in what is now Eastern Kentucky. In 1797 he helped to found the city of Prestonsburg, Kentucky. He died in 1818 near present-day Stanville, Kentucky and was buried in an unmarked grave near the Big Sandy River. Kentucky Historical Society (Marker number: 690) Solomon Stratton Solomon Stratton (1745-1818) was an American soldier and explorer born in Amherst County, Virginia. He was a veteran of the Revolutionary War and George Rogers Clark's 1778 expedition to Illinois in which Fort Kaskaskia was captured from"
"found. That coal was later used in the first ever coal-generated power plant, developed by Thomas Edison, in 1882. John Peter Salling John Peter Salling (sometimes Saling, Sailing, Saline or Salley) was born in Germany in the early 18th century and traveled to America as a young man, settling in Augusta County, Virginia. He was an explorer who led expeditions from Canada to Florida, and is credited with being the first white man to set foot in western Kentucky. As Kentucky's state historian, James Klotter, explains in ""A New History of Kentucky"", ""No one can name with certainty the first"
"popular tastes. Boone's grandson Alphonso Boone was an early settler of the Willamette River Valley in Oregon, arriving in 1846 and establishing Boones Ferry the next year. Three generations of Boone's descendants have been Major League Baseball players: Ray Boone, Ray's son Bob Boone, and Ray's grandchildren Bret Boone and Aaron Boone. Primary material Other material Daniel Boone Daniel Boone (September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer, explorer, woodsman, and frontiersman, whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now Kentucky."
"the stagecoach trail. From the crossing, settlers could continue to Salisbury and Charlotte then on as far south as Georgia. In 1770, the Shallow Ford became part of the western expansion as well, when the Mulberry Fields Road, and what later became known as the Daniel Boone Trail to Kentucky, opened. The area was first known as the Bryan Settlement after Morgan Bryan, a Pennsylvania Quaker who settled in the frontier three miles (5 km) downstream of the Shallow Ford in 1748. Edward Hughes – who may have been the first settler in the region, arriving as early as 1747"
"After 1775, Kentucky grew rapidly as the first settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains were founded, with settlers migrating primarily from Virginia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania; they entered the region via the Cumberland Gap and the Ohio River. It was claimed by Virginia as part of its territory. The most famous of these early explorers and settlers was Daniel Boone, one of the founders of the state. During this period, the settlers introduced commodity agriculture to the area. Tobacco, corn, and hemp were developed as the major commodity crops of Kentucky, and the hunting stage of frontier life faded away."
"area regularly for hunting. Today there are two state recognized tribes in Kentucky, the Southern Cherokee Nation of Kentucky and the Ridgetop Shawnee. Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle was a French explorer who claimed all of the land along the Mississippi River Valley, including Kentucky, for France. In July 1669, Robert de la Salle organized twenty four men and six canoes for his expedition. During this venture, he met Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette, the first white men to explore and map the Mississippi River, in Hamilton, Ontario. The expedition eventually reached the Ohio River, allegedly, which it followed"
"State Historic Park and elsewhere. Bryant also played the role of Whitley in the theatrical documentary William Whitley: Guardian of the Kentucky Road which was produced by That's Just Muggs Productions. Things named for William Whitley include: William Whitley William Whitley (August 4, 1749 – October 5, 1813), was an American pioneer. He was important to the early settlement of the U.S. Commonwealth of Kentucky and fought in the War of 1812. Shortly after his marriage, Whitley began to talk with his wife about moving to the western frontier. When she approved this pursuit, he organized an expedition with his"