A Pound Gap Timeline
The
Pound Gap played a significant role in the settlement of America's first western
frontier. Its historic significance has been overshadowed by that of Cumberland
Gap, gateway to the Bluegrass via Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road. However,
a route that became known as the Kentucky Trace branched off
the Wilderness Road at Castle's Woods (Castlewood, VA) to Indian Creek and
thence over the Gap into Kentucky. Most
of those settlers who chose the hills of far Eastern Kentucky as their piece of the
Promised Land came by way of "the Pound".
Below is a brief timeline chronicling key
events in the history of the Pound Gap.
| 1751 |
Early explorer
Christopher Gist was long believed
by many to have discovered the passage through the
mountains between Virginia and Kentucky that is now known as Pound Gap.
More recent assessments of his journals make this
supposition questionable. However, surveyors for the Ohio Company may
have passed through in this time period. Undoubtedly a number of Long
Hunters used this pass in the 1750s and 1760s. |
| 1767 |
Daniel and Squire Boone and their hunting
companions entered Kentucky through Pound Gap, having traveled from the
Yadkin River in North Carolina to the Holston and Clinch Rivers.
|
| 1774 |
Daniel
Boone and
Michael Stoner
(Steiner) made an urgent journey through the
Gap to warn survey crews of a growing Indian uprising on the Virginia
frontier.
|
| 1803 |
Members of the
"Adams Colony",
the first group of settlers in what is now Letcher County, first viewed
their Kentucky destination from the Gap.
|
| 1836 |
The General Assembly of the
Commonwealth of Kentucky authorized funding for the survey and construction
of a turnpike to be known as the
Mt. Sterling - Pound Gap Road. |
| 1861 |
A Confederate regiment under the command of
Col. John S. Williams took control of the Gap on 23 November.
|
| 1862 |
On 16 March Union forces of the 42nd Ohio
Infantry, under the command of
Brig. General (later President) James A.
Garfield, marched out of Piketon (Pikeville) and forced the Confederates to
retreat from the Gap.
|
| 1864 |
On 1 June,
Gen. John Hunt Morgan and his
cavalry raiders swept through Union forces in the Gap as he began his
lightning strike through the heart of Kentucky.
|
| 1892 |
On May 14,
Dr. Marshall Benton
"Red Fox" Taylor and others ambushed Ira Mullins and five family members
and companions from the cover of the "Killing Rocks". The
Massacre at
Killing Rocks was culminated by the hanging of the Red Fox at Wise, VA
on 27 October, 1893. Dr. Taylor was dubbed the "Red Fox" by the author John
Fox, Jr., who used him as the model for a character in his novels.
|
| 1998 |
The Pound Gap road cut on U.S. Hwy. 23 was
designated a "Distinguished Geological Site" by the Kentucky Society of
Professional Geologists. The exposed strata attracts the attention of
geologists around the world.
|
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©2001-2004 Dan C. Mohn. All rights reserved.
Revised: December 26, 2005.
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