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An Appalachian Tale Restoring Boone’S Wilderness Road

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An Appalachian Tale Restoring Boone’S Wilderness Road Mark Woods An Appalachian Tale Restoring Boone’s Wilderness Road he bison were the first through National Park Service to construct tunnels Cumberland Gap, finding a through Cumberland Mountain in order to break carved by wind and water remove traffic from the historic corridor traversed in the Appalachian Mountain by U.S. Highway 25E for more than 50 years. chain.T Then Native Americans followed what Two objectives were detailed in the legislation: they called the Warrior’s Path when traveling restore the historic appearance of the Gap and between the Ohio Valley and the Shenandoah. In Wilderness Road and improve traffic safety for 1775, Daniel Boone was hired to mark the trail. motorists. Boone’s Wilderness Road, which brought wagons Thus began a multiagency effort spanning and a flood of European settlers across the more than two decades to open the most modern Appalachians, was “the way west” until the mid- vehicle tunnels in the world and to take a land- 19th century. scape 220 years back in time. Through a com- In 1908, 20th-century modernization came bined planning, design, and construction effort to the mountains in the form of a Federal led by the National Park Service and the Federal demonstration project by the U.S. Department Highway Administration, the project would ulti- of Agriculture’s Bureau of Public Roads. One of mately cost $265 million and include: several “Object Lesson Roads” designed to prove • rerouting 2 U.S. highways the efficacy of new road building techniques, a • twin 4,600-foot tunnels 2.5 mile ribbon of crushed, compacted, and • 5 miles of new 4-lane approaches to the tunnels rolled limestone highway was constructed • 2 highway interchanges through Cumberland Mountain to link the • 7 roadway bridges – 4 in Kentucky and 3 in towns of Middlesboro, KY, and Cumberland Tennessee Gap, TN. • a 200-foot railroad bridge (a steel box girder As the number of vehicles and commercial type recognized by the American Institute of traffic using the paved road grew, so did the dan- Steel Construction for design excellence) ger. Before long, this section of U.S. Highway • repair and reuse of an abandoned railroad tun- 25E was saddled with yet another – but tragic – nel under existing U.S. Highway 25E to house nickname: Massacre Mountain. numerous utilities and serve as a part of a In 1940, Congress established Cumberland greenway trail system Gap National Historical Park to preserve the nat- • 2 pedestrian bridges on hiking trails ural gap, or low point, on Cumberland Mountain • 4 new parking areas inside the park because of its national significance in the early With the project authorized in 1973, the years of American westward expansion. Part of process of creating design alternatives and con- the dream for the park was to remove the high- struction plans began. The 1978 Federal way and restore the Cumberland Gap and Highway Act brought the first funding for tunnel Wilderness Road to its 1780-1810 appearance. construction. Project design work started in 1979 More than 60 years later, that dream has and construction in 1985 on a pilot tunnel 10- come true. The asphalt is gone. The traffic is feet wide, 10-feet high, and 4,100-feet long gone. All that is left is the Gap—almost as Daniel drilled from both sides of the mountain. The Boone knew it. pilot tunnel took 2 years to drill and revealed the Tunnels Through the Mountain geologic and hydrologic challenges facing the The restoration of Cumberland Gap began project—springs that would produce 450 gallons in 1973 with the signing of a law1 directing the of water every minute regardless of the weather, 20 CRM No. 5—2002 voids with thick clay infills, caverns as tall as 85 This daunting mitigation project – crucial to ful- feet, and a lake of water 30-feet deep. filling Congress’ intent in creating the park – To keep the tunnels dry, each is lined with a became a key component of the site’s develop- waterproof PVC membrane that is covered with a ment concept plan. 10-inch-thick concrete lining. Groundwater In the early 1990s, as construction pro- drains into a stream that empties into Little ceeded on the tunnels, extensive research began Yellow Creek within the park. Water from the to identify road routes and topographical land caverns flows through a 5-foot-diameter steel forms altered or destroyed during the construc- pipe under the roadway and into the cavern on tion of the Object Lesson Road and later the opposite side of the tunnel. During construc- improvements to U.S. Highway 25E. This infor- tion, daily water quality monitoring was mation was used to complete the mitigation plan required; today water flow is monitored in the and prepare the design for the rehabilitation of tunnel’s Kentucky control room. the Gap’s historic landscape. With the opening of the tunnels to traffic Historical documentation regarding the sig- in October 1996, the dangerous section of U.S. nificance and location of the Gap and the Highway 25E could be closed to the more than Wilderness Road was available from a study pre- 18,000 vehicles that daily passed through the his- pared by National Park Service historian Jere L. toric park. Today, the tunnels carry more than 11 Krakow in 1987.2 In addition, Michael F. Hart, a million vehicles annually, or approximately visual information specialist (now retired) with 32,000 cars per day. the National Park Service’s Denver Service Restoration and Mitigation Center, was challenged with rediscovering the It is noteworthy that the Final Environ- alignment of the Wilderness Road and other sig- mental Statement on the project cited the reha- nificant early trails as well as the approximate bilitation of the Gap and Wilderness Road as the “historic” contours of the topography of the “sad- mitigation for the construction of the tunnels. dle of the Gap.” CRM No. 5—2002 21 Hart’s methodology combined with was awarded, the area around the approximately Krakow’s work were used to prepare construc- 10-foot-wide wilderness trace was planted with tion documents advertised to potential contrac- native grasses, shrubs, and trees. This was made tors in the winter of 2001. A rare combination possible through a multiyear agreement between of artistic skills, historical research, and knowl- the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural edge of photography, surveying, and cartography Resource Conservation Service, and the National created documents that guided contractors to Park Service. This collaboration included harvest- successfully rehabilitating the historic landscape ing seeds from the park and propagating and at the Gap and the adjacent corridor that had replanting thousands of native plants and trees. been the highway. In the late spring of 2002, college students The methodology involved a combination from nearby Lincoln Memorial University of fieldwork and research using, among other ele- planted 20,000 trees in one weekend, transform- ments, an 1833 survey, an 1862 map, re-creation ing barren landscape into a virtual forest of historic photographs by locating original cam- overnight. era positions, surveying from reference points, The final phase of this incredible project is aerial photographs, and extensive field study scheduled for fiscal year 2003. This will include along the mountainside. an outdoor interpretive center with a ranger sta- In verifying the original landscape, specific tion for cave tours, an interpretive pavilion and coordinates were determined for known points exhibits, and restrooms. such as Cudjo Cave, Gap Creek, and the Iron The New Wilderness Road Furnace, resulting in delineation of key resources Today the topography of the Gap is starting throughout the historic district. The National to look more like it did in 1750 when Dr. Park Service and the Federal Highway Thomas Walker, surveyor for the Loyal Land Administration used Auto-Cad to merge four Company, explored the area and wrote in his kinds of digital survey data into a single, compos- journal: ite survey database creating a three-dimensional On the north side of the gap is a large spring, view of the historic landforms of the Gap and which falls very fast, and just above the spring surrounding mountainside. The resulting grading is a small entrance to a large Cave, which the plan enabled engineers and landscape architects spring runs through, and there is a constant to calculate the quantities of cut and fill materials Stream of cool air issuing out. needed to produce the historic features that had Walker is credited with naming the Gap in honor been lost to modern roadbuilding. of William, Duke of Cumberland, brother of Prior to the rehabilitation project, the Gap King George II. was estimated to be 32 feet lower than it was 223 This mountain pass has been known by years ago. An estimated 215,000 cubic yards of many names over the years, some associated with fill dirt, much of which had been retained during royalty, some with tragedy. But no name is more tunnel construction, was used to return the Gap evocative of its role in American history than to contours that probably existed in 1780. Wilderness Road. Today's vistors, like the trav- In July 2001, a contract was awarded to ellers who journeyed this way 225 years ago, can Estes Brothers Construction Company of step back in time and once again share a path Jonesville, VA, to rehabilitate the area. The first with Daniel Boone. _______________ order of business included removing approxi- mately 13,000 tons of asphalt. This was followed Notes 1 Public Law 93-87. by demolishing the former roadway, including 2 uncovering areas that had previously been filled Jere Krakow is currently general superintendent of the National Trails System program in the National with dirt to produce a reasonable grade as well as Park Service’s Intermountain Region.
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