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Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina
Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina
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  • Monument Name

    Daniel Boone’s Trail, Elkville

  • Type

    Marker

  • Subjects

    Historic Civic Figures

    Geography

    Removed Monuments

    Colonial History

    Revolutionary War, 1775-1783

  • City

    Elkville

  • County

    Wilkes

  • Description

    The memorial consisted of a rectangular cast iron plaque attached to a stone slab embedded in the ground. It was destroyed when a massive flood in 1916 ripped through the Upper Yadkin River valley.

  • Inscription

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

  • Dedication Date

    1913

  • 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

  • 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.

  • Location

    The exact location is unknown, but it was near the confluence of Elk Creek and the Yadkin River.

  • Removed

    Yes

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