Marking Daniel Boone's Trail

During 1912-1915, the Daughters in North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky erected 50 metal tablets across four hundred miles to honor the life of Daniel Boone and to mark for future generations his path through the Appalachian Mountain barrier, a path that enabled America’s Western Movement.

The idea for such a trail sprang from the creative mind of the industrious Mrs. Lindsay Patterson of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She served as chairman of the trail-marking effort and ushered the private project to completion with the participation of Daughters, volunteers, and advisors.

A patriotic public gathered to dedicate each marker, and newspapers eagerly wrote accounts of local ceremonies including the joint ceremony at Cumberland Gap attended by thousands. But the world did not stand still during this project, and the effort took place against a backdrop of the Progressive Era, including presidential elections, campaigns for temperance and equal suffrage, war in Europe, and the opening of the Panama Canal.

This is a story that has been too long forgotten, one resurrected now from the pages of century-old newspapers, the records of the DAR, and a diligent search across the countryside to find the 30 surviving markers and to discover what happened to the 20 which have disappeared.

Follow the Daughters as they mark Daniel Boone’s Trail.