The Road That Was Taken

“Stand where the pioneers stood, it’s magical,” said Scott Teodorski, a National Park Service ranger stationed at the Cumberland Gap National Historic Center in Middlesboro, Kentucky.

Teodorski, who grew up in California, remembers coming through the Gap on a family vacation. “We went through in a car and could not pull over. There were too many trucks.”

That has changed. The traffic over Cumberland Gap has been re-routed to a tunnel under the mountain. The highway sections that crossed the Gap have been destroyed, leaving the restored Wilderness Road crossing the Gap in its original location.

The Wilderness Road, a winding dirt road flanked by wildflowers and grazing deer, is a popular hike from the Visitor Center. Starting at the Thomas Walker Trail Head, hikers access the Object Lesson Road, the first “paved” road in the country, and then reach the Wilderness Road Trail. This is the trail that Daniel Boone used to lead settlers into the American West.

The attraction of the gap in pioneer times was a quick pass over the mountains. Today, visitors come to experience the Henely pioneer settlement, the Gap cave, and secluded walks that become lessons in family history. An older gentleman brought his family journal with him and retraced his pioneer ancestors' steps through the Gap.

The Gap stirs deep emotions, Teodorski said. After 9/11, someone from a Native American tribe went into the Gap and left a staff with ceremonial feathers sitting by itself. The hikers left it alone.

The Gap has always inspired poets, songwriters, and ordinary citizens. Ranger Teodorski said, “People like to go there and hang out.” In 1794, Pioneer James Smith had a more poetic entry in his journal: “We started just as the sun began to gild the top of the high mountain. We ascended Cumberland Mountain from the top of which the bright luminary of day appeared to our view in all his rising glory.”

(Photo: At the Gap in spring, looking east toward Virginia. Photo by L. Sponsler)