Boone Beyond Boonesborough

I con­fess to an endur­ing fas­ci­na­tion with Daniel Boone and still read every­thing I can get my hands on about him.  He is best known to Kentuckians as the skilled woods­man respon­si­ble for the set­tle­ment of Boonesborough in 1775.  More impor­tant­ly for us, he left his foot­prints all over Clark County.  The title and top­ic of this essay were sug­gest­ed by Nancy Turner, our for­mer tourism direc­tor, before she fled to join the high muck­ety-mucks in Frankfort.  This is an effort to iden­ti­fy the most impor­tant doc­u­ment­ed Boone sites in Clark County.

The sites below with an aster­isk are marked with a Kentucky Historical Marker.

*Indian Old Fields

Reputed site of the Shawnee vil­lage Eskippakithiki shown on Lewis Evans’ 1755 map and sit­u­at­ed along the Great Warrior’s Path.  Located about 11 miles south­east of Winchester.  Comprises 3,500 acres of fer­tile plain that Native Americans had occu­pied for sev­er­al thou­sand years.  The cel­e­brat­ed Shawnee chief, Catahecassa (Black Hoof), vis­it­ed his for­mer home here in 1816. 

*Pilot Knob

This site in near­by Powell County is thought to be where Boone and his com­pa­ny of longhunters got a view of Indian Old Fields.  According to his biog­ra­phy in John Filson’s Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke, Boone stat­ed, “On the sev­enth day of June [1769], we found our­selves on Red-River, where John Finley had for­mer­ly been trad­ing with the Indians, and, from the top of an emi­nence, saw with plea­sure the beau­ti­ful lev­el of Kentucke.” 

*Lulbegrud Creek

Daniel Boone and his par­ty of explor­ers camped on this branch of Red River in 1770.  According to Boone, they had tak­en along a copy of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels for their amuse­ment.  They gave the creek the name of the town vis­it­ed by Mistress Glumdalclitch called “Lorbrulgrud.”  The spelling was soon cor­rupt­ed to “Lulbegrud.”

Log Lick

According to a depo­si­tion by Boone, Log Lick took its name from a salt lick where William and Major Beasley had cut down trees (1775) to help trap buf­fa­lo for hunters.  Located some­where in the neigh­bor­hood between Log Lick Road and Lulbegrud Creek.

*Salt Spring Trace

One of the first marked trails in Kentucky (1775).  The path began at Fort Boonesborough, crossed the Kentucky River at Blackfish Ford, and fol­lowed a buf­fa­lo trace up Lower Howard’s Creek before turn­ing north and con­tin­u­ing on to the Lower Blue Licks, where Boone and the first set­tlers made salt and hunt­ed buf­fa­lo.  Boone like­ly dis­cov­ered the path on his longhunt in 1769–70.  It was the trace used by Boone and his salt mak­ers when they were cap­tured by the Shawnee in 1778.

*Boone’s Settlement

Boone was award­ed a 400-acre set­tle­ment plus 1,000 acres adjoin­ing, locat­ed in the Schollsville area, for grow­ing a crop of corn in 1775 and 1776.  He claimed the tracts at the Virginia Land Commission held at Boonesborough in December 1779 and lat­er sold the land to William Scholl.  Two of Boone’s daughters—Lavina Scholl and Rebecca Goe—were buried here.

*Boone-Callaway Girls Kidnapping

On a Sunday after­noon in July 1776, Daniel Boone’s daugh­ter Jemima and Richard Callaway’s daugh­ters Betsey and Fanny left Fort Boonesborough to canoe on the Kentucky River.  They drift­ed close to the oppo­site bank near the present bridge and were cap­tured by five Native Americans and tak­en north.  Boone pur­sued them with eight men and res­cued the girls unharmed two days lat­er on Cassidy Creek in Nicholas County.  One of the icon­ic events of the ear­ly Kentucky frontier.

*Daniel Boone, Surveyor—Bush Settlement

Daniel Boone earned sub­stan­tial income as a land sur­vey­or (1783−1797).  The first eleven sur­veys he con­duct­ed for Captain Billy Bush in Clark County served as the basis for the Bush Settlement.  The first was made on January 7, 1783.  In all, Boone sur­veyed a lit­tle over 6,000 acres for Bush, who had locat­ed the land for him­self and others. 

Boone Creek

This Kentucky River trib­u­tary, which marks the bound­ary between Fayette and Clark County, was named for Daniel Boone.  According to Boone, he became acquaint­ed with the creek in 1775 when locat­ing and fil­ing land claims for James Hickman.

The fol­low­ing items are not his­tor­i­cal sites but rather trib­utes to the mem­o­ry of Daniel Boone in Winchester.  A stat­ue of Boone, carved in 1933 by A. D. Fisher, stands today at College Park in Winchester.  A Boone mur­al by Kevin Osbourn appears on the side of the build­ing at 21 North Main Street.  The Clark County Courthouse has a Boone bust and a paint­ing of Boone on Pilot Knob, both exe­cut­ed by Jack Hodgkin.