Boonesborough is an unincorporated community in Madison County, Kentucky, United States. Founded by famed frontiersman Daniel Boone in 1778 as one of the first English-speaking settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains, Boonesborough lies in the central part of the state along the Kentucky River and is the site of Fort Boonesborough State Park, which includes the

Kentucky River Museum The Kentucky River Museum is located in Boonesborough, Kentucky, in Fort Boonesborough State Park. Established in 2002, the museum occupies the former lock operator's home and storage and maintenance building for Lock 10, one of fourteen Lock (wat ...

. The park site has been rebuilt to look like a working fort of the time that Boone resided there. Boonesborough is part of the Richmond-Berea micropolitan area. It is located at the junction of Kentucky Route 388 and Kentucky Route 627.

History

Boonesborough was founded as Boone's Station by the frontiersman Daniel Boone while working for Richard Henderson and Nathanial Hart of the Transylvania Company. Boone led a group of settlers (which included a number of

African Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

) through the mountains from

Fort Watauga Fort Watauga, more properly Fort Caswell, was an American Revolutionary War fort that once stood at the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River in what is now Elizabethton, Tennessee. The fort was originally built in 1775–1776 by the area's ...

(present-day

Elizabethton Elizabethton is a city in, and the county seat of Carter County, Tennessee, United States. Elizabethton is the historical site of the first independent American government (known as the Watauga Association, created in 1772) located west of both th ...

in Tennessee), carving the

Wilderness Road The Wilderness Road was one of two principal routes used by colonial and early national era settlers to reach Kentucky from the East. Although this road goes through the Cumberland Gap into southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee, the other (mo ...

through the Cumberland Gap, and established Fort Boonesborough. Boone lived there from 1775 to 1779. The region was at that time part of the

Commonwealth A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically, it has been synonymous with "republic". The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the ...

of Virginia, which officially chartered Boonesborough in October 1779. It was one of the first English-speaking communities west of the Appalachian Mountains. Boone successfully led his fellow settlers during the Siege of Boonesborough in 1778. He then moved to his son Israel's settlement at

Boone's New Station Boone Station State Historic Site was a Kentucky State Historic Site on Boone's Creek near Athens in Fayette County, Kentucky, USA. Boone's New Station Boone's Station, initially known as Boone's New Station to distinguish it from the fort w ...

near present-day Athens, Kentucky. Although the town served as a way-station for pioneers venturing further into Kentucky during the 1780s and 1790s, it never attracted a significant long-term population, and thus slowly declined. By 1877, Boonesborough had "almost disappeared as a village".

References

External links

Fort Boonesborough State Park
official web site.
Fort Boonesborough Foundation
Unincorporated communities in Madison County, Kentucky Unincorporated communities in Kentucky Daniel Boone Richmond–Berea micropolitan area Colonial settlements in North America {{MadisonCountyKY-geo-stub

History

Further reading

See also

References

External links