Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 6).djvu/44

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44
BOONE'S WILDERNESS ROAD

time but diverged from Boone's Road on Rockcastle Creek, and opened the more important branch of the road toward Louisville by way of Crab Orchard and Danville, and erected Fort Logan one mile west of Standford, in what is now Lincoln County, Kentucky. Harrod's, Logan's, and Boone's forts were the important early "stations" in the West. To them the thousands wended their tedious way over the "Wilderness Road," as both branches (Logan's and Boone's) were fitly called, or down the Ohio from Pittsburg. And along these lines of western movement cabins and clearings made their rapid appearance despite the era of bloodshed which began almost simultaneously with the opening of the Revolutionary War in the East.


Such were the pilgrims of the West. It is interesting to note that these leaders of civilization in the West were true Americans—American born and American bred. It is remarkable that the discoverers of the American central West were either French or American. For the work of exploring this hinterland, England scarcely furnished a