Wilderness Road

The most important westward route through the Appalachians from the Revolution until the 1840s (when the National Road became a more popular route). It was established in 1775 for the Transylvania Company by woodsmen under the leadership of the pioneer Daniel Boone.

In creating the Wilderness Road, Boone followed both animal tracks and Indian paths, as well as using the route through the Cumberland Gap that he himself had established in 1769 (‘Boone's Trace’). The Wilderness Road began at Fort Chiswell, a staging point 11 km/7 mi east of modern Wytheville, Virginia, where routes bringing settlers from the Tidewater and down the Shenandoah Valley met. It followed the Holston River valley southwest to Fort Watauga, at Sycamore Shoals, just west of Elizabethton, Tennessee, then cut northwest through the Gap into Kentucky, passing through what is now the Daniel Boone National Forest, and ended at the settlement of Harrodsburg, in the Kentucky River valley. In the 1790s it was widened to accommodate wagons, and became a toll road. Nowadays, US Route 25E follows it in places.