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“Boone had no intention of remaining at Boonesborough, where he felt scorned, but he had to await the proceedings of the land commission, which arrived there in December.
After it had approved his claim, on Christmas Day, Boone and a number of kindred families led their packhorses and dogs across the frozen Kentucky to a site where he had previously raised a cabin and made a crop of corn in anticipation of claiming the land for himself. The watercourse had become known as Boone’s Creek, and here, at the intersection of several buffalo traces, six miles northwest of Boonesborough, he planted his new settlement of Boone’s Station.” – from “Daniel Boone” by John Mack Faragher
This, according to Faragher, was the beginning of Boone’s Station, where Daniel is said to have lived for the next three years.
When the group reached the station site with a foot of snow on the ground, they erected half-face camps to live in through the winter and began to build the cabins of the station in March. They went from Boonesborough to Boone Station on Christmas Day, 1779, during the coldest winter most had ever seen. Livestock froze to death, wildlife suffered great losses in numbers, and the early settlers suffered from the cold and lack of food. It has been noted that Daniel shared his corn supply with others “even to his last pone.”
During a recent visit to the site, Shelly McClanahan remarked to John Bramel as he was reading aloud the “Boone timeline” regarding the Station, “Rebecca was 6 months pregnant when they got here!” How many women today could/would go (even further) into the wilderness in the worst winter known, to live in a half-face camp for the last three months of her pregnancy?
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