Location of the Wilderness Road at Cumberland Gap
By Jere L. Krakow, Cumberland Gap National Historic Park
Contributed by US National Park Service (LCNHT)
Among the many roads associated with the history of transportation in the United States the Wilderness Road and the natural access point through the Appalachians, Cumberland Gap, immediately come to mind. From the colonial period to just after the turn of the nineteenth century, the road saw an ever increasing volume of traffic, most of which faced westward. Documented generally in a variety of traveler accounts, on contemporary maps and passed along by word of mouth, the route into the great west dominated all others for a time. Eventually surpassed by improved routes across the old northwest, the Ohio River Valley and then by a network of railroads, the route continued to function as an important artery for trade and commerce, as indeed it yet continues to do.
The configuration of the Wilderness Road might aptly be described as a broad loop open on the north. Its eastern leg begins in Virginia near the Potomac River, through a network of roads extending on northward into the Mid-Atlantic states; stretching up the Shenandoah Valley to Staunton and then to the Holston River down which the road continues to the Long Island (Kingsport); the southern base of the loop extending west to Cumberland Gap, and finally swinging northward to the falls of the Ohio at Louisville.