This Daniel Boone storybook is dedicated to the explorers who found trails and created paths through the wilderness for the rest of us to follow. The first roads cut through the wilderness opened up the rugged land for the westward expansion of the United States. My ancestors helped Daniel Boone open up the Cumberland Gap through the Appalachian Mountains.

Preview audio:

storyj.mp/ah9gnnswmbga

Daniel Boone

1734-1820

Blazed a Historic Trail to Open Up the West

As a young adult, Boone supplemented his farm income by hunting and trapping game, and selling their pelts in the fur market.

Through this work, Boone first learned the easy routes westward.

Boone first ventured through the Cumberland Gap on a hunting expedition in 1767.

In 1773, he sought to lead his family and several others to settle in Kentucky, but Cherokee Indians attacked the group, and two of the would-be settlers, including Boone’s son James, were killed.

In 1775, Daniel Boone and 30 other ax-wielding road cutters (including his brother, son-in-law, and my ancestors) blazed a trail through the Cumberland Gap–a notch in the Appalachian Mountains.

I have family history connected to the opening of the Cumberland Gap. Three Burgin boys went to Kentucky with Daniel Boone and helped open the Cumberland Gap. They are related to my Grandpa Burgin's family.

When we drove to North Carolina for a Burgin reunion, we saw the mountain gap where they opened up a trail to the west.