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| Daniel Boone, working for Judge Richard Henderson, explored Kentucky in 1775 and marked a well-defined trail to productive lands, which returned profits for investors. Four years later the first of a still-continuing series of road improvements began; Virginia passed a law for building a "good |  |
| waggon [sic] road through the great mountains."
In 1780 the builders requested payment for the road over Cumberland Gap
in a petition that stated that wagons had passed over it to the convenience
of travelers. From then on, Virginia, followed by Kentucky, passed laws
to improve the road over Cumberland Mountain. Immigration through the
Gap began immediately, and by the end of the Revolutionary War some 12,000
persons had crossed into the new territory. By 1792 the population was
over 100,000 and Kentucky was admitted to the Union.
During the 1790s traffic on the Wilderness Road increased. By 1800 almost 300,000 people had crossed the Gap going west. And each year as many head of livestock were driven east. As it had always been, the Gap was an important route of commerce and transportation. Then in the 1820s and 1830s man overcame the mountain wall. The west could be reached easily over the Erie, the Pennsylvania Main Line, or the Chesapeake and Ohio Canals, or on steamboats up the Mississippi. Cumberland Gap declined in importance, but it had seen the opening of the first American West. |
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