Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 1).djvu/123

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EARLY USE OF BUFFALO ROADS
119

seen. They had marched along the buffalo traces or stolen through the forests without having given to any one any notice of their intention."[1]

The course of one of these famous "traces" is thus described:

"From Big Bone Lick buffalo roads led to Blue Licks, and also southwest to Drennon's Lick, in Henry County, thence to the crossing of the Kentucky just below Frankfort. From the valley of the river they then passed to the high ground east of Frankfort by a deeply worn road yet visible, known as the Buffalo Trace, to the Stamping Ground, in Scott County, a town named from the fact that the animals in vast herds would tread or stamp the earth while crowded together and moving around in the effort of those on the outside to get inside and thus secure protection from the flies. Thence they passed by the Great Crossings, so called from its being the place where they crossed Elkhorn, two miles west of Georgetown, and thence eastward to Blue Lick, May's Lick, and across the river into Ohio. Their roads formed in

  1. Bryant's Station (Filson Club Pub. No. 12), p. 135.