Cumberland Gap National Historical Park (CUGA) is only two and a half hours from Asheville.
The first sign for CUGA is over fifty-five miles away as I get off I-81 and unto US 25E. Here the local road name is Davy Crockett Parkway, when I’m all psyched about going into Daniel Boone Country. However, Crockett was born in east Tennessee, while Boone was just passing through. Boone, born in Pennsylvania, grew up on the Yadkin River Valley in North Carolina.
I expected to learn about Daniel Boone, but the park is so much more. I already wrote about the Hensley Settlement. The park seems to be changing to adjust to the times. The highlight is Cumberland Gap.
I park at Thomas Walker parking area and walk the Object Lesson Road, an ominous name. The gravel road was built in 1907 and funded by the Federal Government to convince voters of the convenience of good roads. This gravel road takes me to Cumberland Gap. The gap isn’t large but it has this sweet sign, which says.
Salt seeking buffalo
Moccasin clad warrior
Battling Civil War soldier
Each was here in the Cumberland Gap and now so are you.
That pretty much encapsulates the history of Cumberland Gap. At 1,600 feet elevation, the gap was the lowest point where people in the southern states could cross the Appalachian Mountains. To put it in perspective, Newfound Gap at the Tennessee-North Carolina boundary is at 5,000 feet.
Dr. Thomas Walker was the first white man to explore and write about the gap in 1750. He was said to discover the gap, something that the Indians had known for centuries. American Indians created the Warrior Path, while hunting bison. But Walker gets the credit because he wrote about the gap, which to me shows the power of documentation.
In 1769, Daniel Boone first came through the gap. Land speculator Richard Henderson commissioned Boone to lead a group of axmen to blaze a trail, which became known as the Wilderness Trail. When we say blaze in this case, we don’t mean that they painted white blazes on trees like the Appalachian Trail. They cut a path through the gap with axes, literally opening up Kentucky to settlers. That encouraged 200,000 to 300,000 settlers to cross Cumberland Gap looking for their own piece of land. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark walked through the gap, separately, in 1806 when they returned from their western expeditions.
A side trail veers off to Tri-State Peak, where you can stand in three states: Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Each state has a plaque with its vital statistic, straight out of an encyclopedia – capitol, state bird, state flower, number of counties. A sign for the Royal Colonial Boundary of 1665 marks the border between the Colony of Virginia and the Province of Carolina from the Atlantic Ocean westward across North America.
I continue down the Wilderness Trail, stopping at the Iron Furnace and the entrance to Gap Cave. I want to retrace my steps to go back up to the gap into Kentucky the way settlers did it. At the gap, I take the Wilderness Road Trail, which is supposed to be part of the original Boone trail, dated 1780 to 1810.
The Daughters of the American Revolution placed a massive four-sided rock structure to commemorate the Daniel Boone Trail. The DAR from Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina–Boone did live in North Carolina — have put up a plaque for their state. They all include the words “From North Carolina to Kentucky.” The DAR is everywhere.
I read that the trail through the gap used to be the old US 25E. I find it hard to picture it as I walk back up what was the southbound lane of the old highway. For decades, a modern highway went right up to the historic gap. As cars and trucks came through the gap, it was called Massacre Mountain, because of the number of accidents. In 1996, US 25E was rerouted by building a tunnel through Cumberland Mountain from Tennessee to Kentucky. Later Congress appropriated funds to restore the gap to its historic condition. In 2001, the park service removed the concrete and reshaped the contour to what it was supposed to be during Daniel Boone’s time. I walk to the gap and I can’t see any sign of a highway, which means that the reroute was a success.
I’ve been everywhere, man, I’ve been everywhere!
CUGA is the last park in my quest to visit all the national parks in the Southeast, seventy-one (71) in all. I first visited parks in a thorough, deliberate manner in 2010, though I had been to many national parks before. This five-year project took me from Jean Lafitte in Louisiana to Cape Lookout in North Carolina, Christiansted in the Virgin Islands to Cumberland Gap in Kentucky. Now comes the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service and my book, Forests, Alligators, Battlefields: My journey through the national parks of the south.