Boonesborough, Kentucky’s second oldest Euro-American settlement, was established in the year 1775 by Col. Richard Henderson’s Transylvania Company. Daniel Boone led a party of road cutters through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. They reached the mouth of Otter Creek in present-day Madison County on April 6, 1775. The men set about clearing ground and building a fort. Food supplies were limited, so high priority was given to hunting.
Kentucky was blessed with an abundance of wild game at that time. Although deer, bear, and turkey were plentiful, hunters especially sought out buffalo for its meat and hide. Buffalo tended to gather at Kentucky’s many salt licks, which made these favored hunting spots. These licks also provided a valuable source of salt, critical for preserving meat. The most notable hunting spot for the Boonesborough pioneers was the Lower Blue Licks, about 45 miles from Boonesborough on the Licking River.
Numerous buffalo traces led to Lower Blue Licks. The largest of these “buffalo roads” ran from Lexington to the lick and then on to Limestone (now Maysville). Pioneers called this the “Big Buffalo Road,” and it became the basis for present-day US 68.
More important to residents at Boonesborough was a buffalo trace that led up Lower Howard’s Creek and tied into the Big Buffalo Road about eight miles west of Lower Blue Licks. Native Americans had long used the trail, and the men at Fort Boonesborough discovered it shortly after their arrival. As described by William Bush, one of Boone’s road cutters:
“I have been acquainted with the lower Salt Spring trace ever since the Spring of the year 1775 and it leads from Boonsborough to Howards creek and to the said Indian encampments and crossed the north fork [of Lower Howard’s Creek] about thirty or forty yards above the mouth of said north fork, thence up the north fork…and on to the lower blue Licks.”
The many crisscrossing buffalo roads made it difficult for hunters to follow the trail. To solve that problem, Robert McMillan and his brother marked the route. McMillan stated in a deposition that he “came to Kentucky in the latter part of the summer 1775 and settled at Boonsborough in the same year. And on the last day of 1775 and the first day of 1776, he and his brother [James] marked the trace from the lower blue lick to Boonsborough.”
The surveyor Enoch Smith claimed that Salt Spring Trace was one of the earliest marked roads in Kentucky:
“In the year 1775, he came to this country in company with colonel Henderson and settled at Boonsborough and remained in this country the greater part of that summer. One of the first or nearly the first of the roads that was marked was the road leading from Boonsborough to the lower Salt Spring on Licking and was known by the name of the Hunters road or the trace to the Lower salt spring and was a road of as much notoriety as any in the country.”
The journey from Boonesborough to Lower Blue Lick began by climbing the hill west of the fort and following the ridgeline before descending to the river, opposite the mouth of Lower Howard’s Creek. An historic ford crossed the Kentucky River there. In September 1778, Shawnee chief Blackfish led an army of 400 Shawnee, Cherokee, and Wyandot warriors and 40 French-Canadians to besiege Boonesborough. One of the pioneers described the route Blackfish’s army took to the fort:
“Just below Boonesborough, at what twas called Blackfish’s ford, Blackfish crossed the river, marched round the hill above the fort, and struck down the British colors at the edge of that Big bottom, right opposite to the fort, at the foot of the hill. A rocky ford.”
Blackfish Ford was a noted low-water crossing place on Kentucky River until 1903, when water levels were dramatically altered by the Corps of Engineers’ construction of the lock and dam at Valley View.
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From the ford, Salt Spring Trace followed a buffalo road up Lower Howard’s Creek to the confluence of the North Fork near a site pioneers referred to as the Indian Camp. This was where Blackfish’s army camped the night before the great siege in September 1778. Jesse Hodges, who was present at the siege, later answered questions about the camp during a deposition:
“Do you know of any place called and known by the name of the Indian Camp on or near the said Salt Spring trace in the years 1779 or 1780?”
“Yes. Below the junction of the north fork and Howard’s Creek and between Major John Wilkerson’s Mill dam and Mill where the army of Indians camped in 1778 before the siege of Boonsborough which was the largest Indian encampment I ever saw on Howard’s creek.”
The Indian encampment was in the bottom land below the present reservoir on Lettie Lane. In the course of a lawsuit, William Sudduth surveyed the Salt Spring Trace near the Indian Camp. His map shows the trace crossing North Fork near the Indian Camp then running up the east side of the fork all the way to its headwaters. The lower end of the North Fork is submerged today by WMU’s reservoir. According to longtime county resident Doug Oliver, an old road along the North Fork is still in place under the water. Doug recalls when the reservoir was drained to build the new dam in 1984, a deeply rutted road and stone fence beside it were uncovered. This was no doubt a remnant of the Salt Spring Trace.
At the headwaters of North Fork, the trace passed over the dividing ridge between the drainage of Kentucky River and the drainage of Licking River. The trace next crossed Hancock Creek, passed through the “Fallen Timber” and the “Sycamore Forest,” then crossed Johnson Creek before striking Strodes Creek in Bourbon County.
The Salt Spring Trace, like many of Kentucky’s early landmarks, has disappeared into the mists of time.
