In 1775, the now-legendary frontiersman Daniel Boone blazed a trail through the Cumberland Gap - a notch in the Appalachian Mountains located near the intersection of Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee - through the interior of Kentucky and to the Ohio River.
Known as the Wilderness Road, the trail would serve as the pathway to the western United States for some 300,000 settlers over the next 35 years. Boone’s pioneering path led to the establishment of the first settlements in Kentucky, including Boonesboro, and to Kentucky’s admission to the Union as the 15th state in 1792.
