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Chief Editor, HistoricMarkers.com

Twenty Thousand Markers and Counting

RICHMOND, VA – Today, Jim Kuntz contributed the 20,000th historical highway marker, The Boone's Lick Road MO171. Marked by the Daughters of the American Revolution and the State of Missouri and Located in St. Charles, Missouri, this marker is one of many dedicated to the travels of Daniel Boone. Congratulations to Jim and many others who have made HistoricMakers.com a fun, educational, and meaningful experience for thousands of educators, students, patriots, and history buffs.

HistoricMarkers.com is dedicated to cataloging and promoting United States historical markers. This is done by recording the text and location of each marker by state. Where possible, we also display a picture of the marker or the history it commemorates, maps to help locate the maker and driving directions. Finally, we provide homage to the significance of these markers by providing content that can freely be embedded in web sites. The goal is simply to help get out the word and encourage each of us to more fully appreciate our heritage.

A trace first marked by the Indians. The trail followed by trappers and hunters and by Daniel Boone when he discovered the salt springs, afterwards called the Boone's Lick which gave to this road its name. The main highway out of which grew the Santa Fe Trail, the Salt Lake Trail, and the Great Oregon Trail.

[boulder of Missouri Granite, from Iron County, and Bronze tablet showing the retreat of the Buffalo and Indian as the White man appears on the scene; being looked upon by Daniel Boone.]

[This marker should have been placed at Main St. and Boone's Lick Road, where the road really begins; at the Western House. But the powers of the day, picked this location, because the car traffic would lead right to it from the new bridge across the Missouri River, and they thought tourists would not find the correct starting point.]

Originally located on a bluff on Stinson Creek in northwest Fulton, about 300 yards north of the Boone's Lick Trail, this rock bears the name D. Boone with the date 1801 and an arrow pointing due west. The gift of Mr. & Mrs. Harry McIntire to the Kingdom of Callaway Historical Society, it was placed here and dedicated November 4, 1967.

Missouri achieved statehood in 1821 as a result of the famous "Missouri Compromise." It was decreed that Missouri be admitted as a slave state, but thereafter no state north of the 36° 30' North latitude in the Louisiana Territory would be permitted to harbor the institution." The Compromise left an uneasy equilibrium that kept the country together until the troubles in Kansas began in the 1850's.

The first consequence of Missouri's admission as a slave state was a flood of immigration by people Southern heritage, from states such as Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia. Southerners, like Easterners, were on the move westward in the first half of the nineteenth century. Many of these new Missourians located in the fertile Missouri River Valley; Some brought slaves, and many others who did not own slaves brought with them a tolerance for the slave culture.

The area of central Missouri having the highest proportion of slave-holders came to be known as "Boonslick". The boundaries of this territory are subject to conjecture, then as now, but in this part of Missouri the boundary can be laid out along the deep valley of the Loutre River that exists 2½ miles west of here. This natural barrier, the existence of German settlements centered at Hermann, only 15 miles to the south, and of a railroad tying commerce to St. Louis, just to the east, would turn Danville into a no-man's land by the end of the Civil War.

The Boonslick was isolated from the rest of the slave-holding South by the mountain region known as the Ozark plateau, where (as elsewhere in the South) the slave culture did not take root. Even as the 1860's arrived, transportation of goods and agriculture products in and out of the Boonslick depended inordinately on steamboats plying the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. St. Louis, by then a manufacturing center with a large proportion of European immigrant labor, stood squarely between the Boonslick and the rest of the slave-holding South.

In 1861, the area we now know as "Little Dixie" - the Boonslick - was the northernmost pocket of Southern and slave-holding sympathies in all of the United States. By early 1862, the Confederacy lost any opportunity it ever had to control the Boonslick by force of arms, and regular Confederate armies were operating out of Arkansas. It was simple geography and some say a heavy-handed military adminstration of the population sympathetic to Southern views, and that brought about the fierce guerrilla civil forces warfare, practiced by both sides, that most people associate with Missouri's Civil War.

All of these factors helped to bring about Danville's date with destiny, October 14, 1864.

Covered bridges have existed for nearly all of man's recorded history. Ancient Babylonians are credited with having erected the first such structure over the Euphrates River about 783 B.C.. It continued to be a popular bridging method with similar bridges becoming common throughout Medieval Europe. Yet, it was not until 19th century America that the covered bridge idea reached it highest degree of use and design variation.

At the turn of the century, the steel and iron industry began to boom in the United States. It greatly influenced bridge design. Engineers began to rely less on wooden bridge structures and more on modern metals. Combined with heavier rail and truck shipments and higher levels of traffic, wooden bridges became obsolete. The few wooden bridges that remained were often bypassed with new roads and metal bridges.

In Missouri, the covered bridge was first used in the 1850s when roads, railroads and overland transportation in general became a practical and important mode of travel. The first covered bridge in the state was built in 1851 in Boone County over Perche Creek on the Boone's Lick Trail. Eventually, 30 covered bridges were built in Missouri. Most of these were constructed in northern Missouri in the years just after the Civil War.

The ravages of time and progress took their toll on Missouri's covered bridge population. Fire, flood, abandonment or re-routing of once heavily used roadways and simple neglect left only eight covered bridges in the state in 1958; today only four are still standing.

In the 1800s and the early 1900s, posters were an important means of advertising that lined the roadways much like billboards do today. The covered bridge, because of the protection it offered, became a prime spot for these richly colored advertisements. Posters advertised everything from the latest miracle cure to the newest sewing machine, from the big circus coming to town and the best turnip seeds.