The Boone Trail is a marked trail between

Virginia Beach Virginia Beach (colloquially VB) is the List of cities in Virginia, most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), U.S. commonwealth of Virginia. The city is located on the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in southeaster ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

and

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, laid to honour the travels of U.S. explorer

Daniel Boone Daniel Boone (, 1734September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer and frontiersman whose exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. He became famous for his exploration and settlement of Kentucky, which was then beyo ...

History

Between 1913 and 1938, Joseph Hampton Rich, a resident of Mocksville,

North Carolina North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...

, placed 358 metal tablets between

and

, in honor of

and his travels. Although many of the tablets are associated with locations visited by Boone, many were simply placed wherever Rich could collect the necessary donations from schools and communities to erect a monument. He established the Boone Trail Highway Association to further his project. From the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s, the Association published a newsletter detailing the efforts to install new monuments. Boone Trail marker in Sanford

The tablets were (at least partially) constructed from metal salvaged from the battleship , sunk during the

Spanish–American War The Spanish–American War (April 21 – August 13, 1898) was fought between Restoration (Spain), Spain and the United States in 1898. It began with the sinking of the USS Maine (1889), USS ''Maine'' in Havana Harbor in Cuba, and resulted in the ...

in 1898. The tablets were typically located near schools, government buildings, or along old highway routes. Over the years, many of the markers have been lost to highway construction and urban sprawl. In the late-1990s, a group of descendants of

established the Boone Trail Highway & Memorial Re-Association with the intent of locating the markers which remained. Approximately 60 tablets have been located so far. One of the tablets can be found on Franklin Street in

Chapel Hill, North Carolina Chapel Hill is a town in Orange County, North Carolina, Orange and Durham County, North Carolina, Durham counties, North Carolina, United States. Its population was 61,960 in the 2020 United States census, making Chapel Hill the List of municipa ...

. Another can be found in front of historic Old Main on the campus of The

University of North Carolina at Pembroke The University of North Carolina at Pembroke (UNC Pembroke or UNCP) is a public university in Pembroke, North Carolina, United States. UNC Pembroke is a master's level degree-granting university and part of the University of North Carolina syste ...

Pembroke, North Carolina Pembroke is a town in Robeson County, North Carolina, United States. It is about 90 miles inland and northwest from the Atlantic Coast. The population was 2,823 at the 2020 census. The town is the seat of the state-recognized Lumbee Tribe of ...

References

* ''Rich Man: Daniel Boone'' by Everette G. Marshall (Sugar Tree Enterprises, 2003)

External links

* – a search for markers that had its last update in 2006.
Marker at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke
Historic trails and roads in the United States Daniel Boone {{NorthCarolina-stub