Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road

Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road
This occurred in the same time frame as the Revolutionary War on our time line.

A person could read Daniel Boone and Wilderness Road in The Complete book of United States History, these stories about Daniel Boone online, or another book. I used the online story but I did a copy paste so I could edit certain points especially in the wording about Native Americans. I also used a couple of library books though neither were terrific.

A link showing what he looked like.

Daniel Boone/History Bill Video (ok I suppose but I decided against using it for various reasons).

We used this map of the Wilderness Road.

Using our regular US map as a guide we made land masses type relief map using salt dough to show location of the Appalachian Mountains, Rocky Mountains, and the major rivers in the United States. As we study westward expansion it is my intention to mark the main pioneer movements on our map. For my salt dough I used 1 cup salt, 1 cup flour, ½ cup water and it was enough for printer paper sized maps for two kids.

Pioneers on the Wilderness Road
I used Pioneers and Patriots which has a three chapter story titled Pioneers Going West about the Wilderness Road. My library had no books on Wilderness Road. I had no luck finding a library book for this topic.

Chapter 1—Possible Activity—A loom type activity (I used a very simplified/small version of this) or do an activity using plant dyes. The idea I hoped to reinforce was the preparation and supplies needed to travel in that time.

Chapter 2—Possible Activity—make moccasins. The many instructions (and videos) available all seem to follow the same idea from this site. Again, this can be used to talk about preparation or how the journey was dangerous and hard on clothing/shoes, animals, and people. We actually just read the chapter and my son wanted to act out the journey.

Chapter 3—Possible Activity—paint the the salt dough map and mark the trail. You could make a log cabin type thing to go along with this chapter to emphasize life upon arrival perhaps.

I’ve got plans for Ohio River Pioneers (including Johnny Appleseed), Plains Pioneers, Sante Fe Trail, Oregon Trail, Gold Rush, Pony Express, Alamo, etc. coming later. However, I scheduled the Louisiana Purchase and Lewis and Clark next in our history chronology as I believe it follows this (and the Revolution) by date.