Rivers great and small were the highways for early pioneers moving west. Where the rivers narrowed, backwoods people followed trails like the Warrior's Path, a singlefile footpath worn smooth by centuries of Native American travel. After a few hardy souls blazed a trail, scattered settlements soon followed.

In the mid-eighteenth century, the eastern slopes of the Appalachian Mountains were explored by hundreds of hunters and scouts. These men searched through the dense forests and steep mountains for an easy pass to the Western frontier. It was finally found in 1750 by an English doctor who had gone west as an agent for a Virginia land company. Thomas Walker found a gap in the mountains at 1,665 feet above sea level. The natural gap was on the border of the modern states of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. Native Americans had beaten it down for decades. From there a great...