The Long Loop: Day One (Johnson City to Danville, Kentucy)

In Search of Real America — Tuesday 5-19-26

We are still on familiar ground, passing through Gate City and driving through the Cumberland Gap.

Gate City was the original gateway to the West. In two days we’ll pass St. Louis, which later earned the same moniker. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark passed through both.

Daniel Boone’s original 1775 path, known as Boone Trace and the Wilderness Road, laid the foundation for westward expansion. James Boone, his eldest son, was brutally killed at age 16 during an ambush by a coalition of Delaware, Shawnee, and Cherokee warriors. The attack took place on October 10, 1773, near Wallen’s Creek in Powell Valley, close to our motorcycle route.

We stopped for a rest break at the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park and found this marker:

“Settling an Old Dispute”

“Near here, famed explorer Meriwether Lewis made a discovery that may have mattered more to the people of Kentucky and Tennessee than Lewis and Clark’s first sight of the Pacific Ocean in 1805. Both Lewis and Clark came through Cumberland Gap on their way home, traveling separately. They reported back to President Jefferson in Washington during the winter of 1806–07.

Colonel Arthur Campbell of Kentucky asked Lewis to use his sextant to determine the true latitude near Cumberland Gap and settle a bitter dispute. For 27 years, no one agreed on the exact location of the Tennessee-Kentucky state line. Both states claimed it should rest at latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes north. But where exactly did that line fall in these rugged mountains?

Lewis discovered that the old Walker survey had placed the line incorrectly—by nearly ten miles. Kentucky and Tennessee eventually negotiated a compromise boundary fourteen years later.”

And now we’re at our first destination: Danville, just southwest of Lexington.

Danville formed part of the Great Settlement Area around Fort Harrod, first settled in 1774. The site originally carried the name Crow’s Station after settler John Crow, but Walker Daniel—Kentucky’s first district attorney—surveyed and platted the town after purchasing 76 acres near the Wilderness Road from Crow in 1783. The city took Daniel’s name. The Virginia legislature officially established Danville on December 4, 1787.

Tomorrow we’re headed to Vincennes, where the George Rogers Clark National Historical Park rotunda stands.