Saturday, October 18, 2014

Daniel Boone II

Speaking of Daniel - Last time I was writing about the TV show. It's not perfect, but I really like watching it. It made me reminisce about the last couple years when I was in Kentucky. I made a point of seeing a lot of the places associated with him. If he were still alive, it might call for some type of restraining order, but, he isn't, so I'm good.

I think he was born in one of the Carolinas. They probably know the location. Undoubtedly the building doesn't exist, but they would have put up a faky duplicate of what they think it would have looked like. I don't really like that sort of thing, so I didn't even look into finding that spot. But you can drive along the approximate route he would have led people to from there up into Kentucky. Along the way there is a marker for where one of his children was killed in an Indian attack. The area hugs the range of mountains then there is eventually this big gap in the range. That's the Cumberland Gap. I loved that place. When I was growing up I thought I would like to visit it if it was still around. Then I realized its like a geologic formation so it has to be still around. And it is. You follow what used to be called the Warrior's Path, then called the Wilderness Road, and now Highway 25 towards Boonesboro. (To do list - establish a town someday so I can have it named after me.) There they have one of those faky replicas of what it would have looked like. You're supposed to pay to go through it, but we just walked right in. Security at the fort has apparently gone downhill since Daniel's day. However, about two miles away is the site of where the actual fort stood.

You can, and I did, go on from there and see where he moved to later just a few miles southeast of Lexington. He fought a battle at Blue Licks state park north of there. The battlefield itself is really small. It happened after Yorktown and was about the last battle of the Revolutionary War. Israel Boone was one of his children. He was killed at that battle. Poor Israel. On the TV show he's a cute blonde. He was actually older than the show has him. Also, his wife was apparently beautiful, but she had black hair, not red. Daniel actually had reddish hair. The casting was off. They should have gotten that right, but not at the risk of getting rid of my hero, Fess Parker.

Daniel is "buried" in Frankfort, KY. It's a beautiful spot, on top of a hill, overlooking the state capitol. He actually died in Missouri. He got fed up over legal issues he had in Kentucky and moved out of the state. He was a surveyor and kept getting taken to court. I think he was very honest, just bad at surveying. He didn't really want anything to do with Kentucky any more. Partly because of that there is some controversy that when he was reinterred form the burial site in Missouri, the Missouri people, kept Daniel and sent Kentucky someone else. Tricky.

I've included pictures of some of these sites. I have some trouble finding people interested in sites associated with people that have been dead for 200 years. Go figure.


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