The Boone's Lick Country

The Boone's Lick Country. . , Boone's Lick Country , The countryside around this salt lick, known as the "Boone's Lick Country" was ideal for settlement by the hardy pioneers of the early 19th century. It possessed fertile land for raising crops and livestock, timber for building, saline springs for salt manufacturing and the Missouri River as a water highway on which to bring needed supplies upstream and to ship produce to market downstream. , When salt began here, the Loutre Island settlement was the western edge of the frontier. As settlers became more confident moving into the newly acquired Indian lands, the presence of the salt works moved the frontier westward almost 80 miles in a very short time. , Boone's Lick Road , Although many people moved into the Boone's Lick country by keelboat up the Missouri River, most went overland on the Boone's Lick Road because it was a less expensive way to travel. This primitive highway began in St. Charles, passed through present-day Warrenton, Fulton, Columbia and Franklin and then on to Boone's Lick. , The road probably had its beginnings as a trail blazed by Nathan Boone in August of 1808. Boone was guiding Gen. William Clark and his friends overland from St. Charles to build Fort Osage, near present-day Independence. Their route took them past the Boone's Lick. , By 1827 these overland routes led to the Boone's Lick Country. Commissioners were appointed to survey and lay out an official state route, which generally followed what became U.S. Highway 40. The Boone's Lick Road was a major pioneer trail and is now considered an important pathway of westward expansion. , (side quote:), The Great Migration , "Some families came in the spring of 1815; but in the winter, spring, summer and autumn of 1816, they came like an avalanche. It seemed as though Kentucky and Tennessee were breaking up and moving to the Far West. Caravan after caravan passed over the prairies of Illinois all bound to the Boone's Lick. The stream of immigration had not lessened in 1817."- , John Mason Peck, Baptist Missionary in St. Charles, date unknown