Documenting the American South

Monument Name

Daniel Boone’s Trail, Cook’s Gap

Type

Marker

Subjects

Historic Civic Figures

Geography

Removed Monuments

Colonial History

Revolutionary War, 1775-1783

City

Cook’s Gap

County

Watauga

Description

The memorial consisted of a rectangular cast iron plaque attached to a stone slab embedded in the ground. The marker was missing by 1963 when another marker (Three Forks Church) was moved to a site near Cook’s Gap on the Blue Ridge Parkway. That marker (the one pictured) in turn was stolen sometime in 2002.

Inscription

DANIEL BOONE’S TRAIL / FROM / NORTH CAROLINA TO KENTUCKY / 1769 / MARKED BY THE N.C. DAUGHTERS OF THE / AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Dedication Date

May 2, 1914

Decade

1910s

Series

DAR Daniel Boone's Highway Marker

Supporting Sources

Jones, Randell. Trailing Daniel Boone, Daughters of the American Revolution Marking Daniel Boone’s Trail, 1912-1915, (Winston-Salem, NC: Daniel Boone Footsteps, 2012)

“North Carolina Daniel Boone Heritage Trail,” North Carolina Daniel Boone Heritage Trail, Inc., (accessed January 11, 2016) Link

“North Carolina Joins In Boone Trail Movement,” Asheville-Gazette News, (Asheville, NC), November 10, 1914, 3

“The Trail Taken by Boone Through State Now Marked,” News and Observer, (Raleigh, NC), July 11, 1915, 17

Public Site

Yes

Materials & Techniques

Cast iron, stone

Sponsors

Daughters of the American Revolution

Monument Dedication and Unveiling

No ceremony was held, but Mr. W.A. Miller was sent for the purpose of placing what was the last marker on the trail in North Carolina.

Subject Notes

Daniel Boone’s marked trail begins at Boone Cave Park in Davidson County, NC, crosses the Yadkin River at the Shallow Ford near Huntsville, and ends at Fort Boonesborough, Kentucky, where Boone served during the American Revolution. In 1913 Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Chapters placed 13 markers along the North Carolina portion of the trail which mostly follows Old US Highway 421. Mrs. Lindsay Patterson of Winston-Salem chaired the project that eventually erected 45 tablets in North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky. At the Cumberland Gap (Tennessee) the four states combined to erect a single commemorative monument.

Daniel Boone is famous for exploring the American frontier beyond the Appalachian Mountains. He blazed one of the trails that opened up areas west of the Appalachian’s to increased European settlement. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1734, lived in the Yadkin Valley, North Carolina from 1752-1769, where he married Rebecca Bryan, raised a large family, and traded animal furs. He died in Missouri in 1820 and is buried in Kentucky.

Removed

Yes

Former Locations

The marker was missing by 1963 when another marker (adjacent to Three Forks Church old cemetery in Boone) was moved to a site near Cook’s Gap on the Blue Ridge Parkway. That marker (the one pictured) in turn was stolen sometime in 2002.