Santa Fe Trail & Boonslick Trail map.
The Boone’s Lick Road or Boonslick Trail was an east-west transportation route in the early 1800s from eastern to central Missouri.
Missouri’s first main road to the west ran on the north side and roughly parallel to the Missouri River, westward 150 miles to Old Franklin. The trail began at the Missouri River port of St. Charles, Missouri, a late colonial town near St. Louis, passing through Warren, Montgomery, Callaway, Boone, and Howard Counties.
Early day St. Charles, Missouri.
In 1769, Louis Blanchette settled along the Missouri River, establishing the settlement that would become St. Charles. Other families soon settled in the area, including Daniel Boone and his family along Femme Osage Creek. Before long, more settlers began to push back into the wilderness on the western side of the Mississippi River.
In 1804, on their Corps of Discovery Expedition, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark observed salt springs in the area.
In 1805, Daniel Boone’s sons, Nathan and Daniel Morgan Boone, seized on Nathan’s recent discovery of the salt lick more than 100 miles west on Salt Creek in Howard County. Here, three natural salt springs merged into Salt Creek, where animals often licked the ground where salt had risen to the surface. Thus, the area was called a “salt lick,” later named Boone’s Lick. Located in central Missouri, it was about halfway between Boonville and Glasgow, across the Missouri River from Arrow Rock. Starting a business at one of the licks, they evaporated the water by boiling it in kettles to preserve meat and other tasks. The route they traveled to the lick started as a Native American trace. However, the Boone brothers blazed the trace into an overland trail from St. Charles, known as the Boone’s Lick Trail. At that time, there were fewer than 1,000 Americans in the area.
Nathan Boone.
In 1806, they established a sizable extraction operation, floating the salt in hollow logs down the Missouri River to St. Louis, Missouri. Because the Boone brothers’ lick was the source of a necessary commodity and because the westward trail was named for the lick, the surrounding region itself, in what is today’s counties of Howard, Cooper, Saline, Boone, Chariton, and Randolph, came to be known as “the Boone’s Lick.” As the Boones and others began to describe the bounteous surrounding country as looking much like the land around Lexington, Kentucky, it stirred migration among settlers.
As the War of 1812 ended and hostilities between the white settlers and Indians diminished, a tremendous pent-up demand was unleashed for land west of the Mississippi River. The trail that Nathan and Daniel Boone had cut in the early 1800s plunged to the heart of the fertile land near the salt lick.
“Boone’s Lick Country” was the core of a larger area, eventually known as Little Dixie, because it was settled primarily by migrants from Virginia and Kentucky, traveling by boat down the Ohio River, then up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. They brought with them the culture of the South, developing hemp and tobacco plantations dependent on African American slaves. They created a network of institutions, including Protestant religion, Jeffersonian democracy, local governments, schools, colleges, newspapers, banks, and more.
In 1816, the town of Old Franklin appeared and boomed along the northern edge of the Missouri River a bit south of Boone’s Salt Lick. Boone’s Lick Road was cut and widened to accommodate increasing traffic for Westward emigration. “Boone’s Lick Country” was fertile, not only with salt but also with timber, water, and wild game.
William Becknell blazes the Santa Fe Trail.
In August 1821, the United States welcomed Missouri as the 24th state in the Union. The early territorial counties were divided into many new ones.
In September 1821, William Becknell, known as “the father of the Santa Fe Trail,” started from Old Franklin and made the first successful overland trade expedition to Santa Fe, New Mexico, using pack mules. Calico was bought in Missouri for a few coppers and sold in Santa Fe for several gold dollars. His return to Old Franklin marked the opening of the Santa Fe Trail. Boone’s Lick Road became busier, and “prairie commerce” developed Missouri and all the territory indistinctly known as the “Far West.” The Santa Fe Trail led from Old Franklin westward to Santa Fe, New Mexico, about 900 miles away.
Van Bibber Tavern on Boones Lick Road in Montgomery County, Missouri.
In the following years, the traffic on the route gradually increased to handle thousands of pioneers moving west with their wagons, families, and livestock. Soon, stage routes were established for mail service and passenger travel. Steamboats were the primary medium for transportation and trade between the Boone’s Lick and the outside world.
Among the many men who traveled westward, exploring deserts, prairies, and mountain ranges, fighting Indians and wild beasts, colonizing and governing, gold-seekers and empire builders, were intrepid heroes including James Bridger, Kit Carson, John Sutter, Francis Xavier Aubry, William Becknell, Francis Storrs, Moses Austin, Peter Burnett, Major William Gilpin, Colonel Alexander Doniphan, General Stephen Kearny,
Boone’s Lick, Missouri, today by Kathy Alexander.
Franklin, Smithton, Columbia, Fulton, Williamsburg, and Warrenton were among the towns founded along the trail. As towns and county seats were founded, the trail took different shortcuts, especially in Boone and Callaway Counties. Cedar, Roche Perche, and Moniteau Creeks were major streams crossed along the trail.
The Boone Brothers’ salt business lasted about a quarter-century, ending in about 1830. At that time, the area’s population had grown to about 33,000, about a quarter of the state population.
In the 1830s and 1840s, Joseph Smith and his followers, members of the new Church of the Latter-day Saints, followed this route to establish the Far West, Missouri settlement.
In 1860, the area’s population was about 95,000, or about ten percent of the state population.
After the Civil War, railroads began to be built through the area.
Travel along the Santa Fe Trail ended in 1880 when the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Old Boone’s Lick Trail near Perche Creek in Boone County, Missouri.
Parts of Boone’s Lick Road were eventually improved or developed into paved roads. Its route was the forerunner to today’s U.S. Highway 40 and Interstate 70. However, portions of the old trail are still used in Boone County, although most travelers don’t even realize it. The old road is Broadway, Highway WW, and Rocheport Gravel Road, among others.
Today, the salt lick is maintained as Boone’s Lick State Historic Site. The 52-acre heavily wooded site features three salt springs and a salt creek. Some remnants of the salt works are visible, including wooden posts rising from Salt Creek and one large spherical cast iron kettle initially used to boil saltwater. It is adjacent to Missouri State Highway 187 (County Road 328), between Lisbon and Petersburg, east of Arrow Rock, near Boonesboro.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, July 2024.
The old Boones Lick Trail Inn in St. Charles, Missouri, still stands. Photo courtesy Google Maps.
Also See:
Byways & Historic Trails – Great Drives in America
Old Franklin & the Start of the Santa Fe Trail
Santa Fe Trail – Highway to the Southwest
Sources:
American Roads
Boone’s Lick Road Association
Kenneth Westhues – Booneslick
KRCG News
National Park Service
Wikipedia