June 1, 1792: Kentucky became the first state admitted to the Union west of the Appalachian Mountains. It had temporarily been considered a Virginia county but was eventually granted statehood. Many settlers arrived in the area by route of the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap.
Wilderness Road to Statehood
BY: HISTORY.COM EDITORS
Dr. Thomas Walker and surveyor Christopher Gist first explored the area now known as Kentucky in 1750 and 1751. The outbreak of the Seven Years War prevented further exploration until frontiersman Daniel Boone visited Kentucky in 1769 and recognized the potential of the area’s natural resources. In 1775, a group of settlers created the Transylvania Company with the purpose of settling the land between the Kentucky, Ohio and Cumberland rivers.
Working for the Transylvania Company, Boone forged the Wilderness Road over Kentucky’s Cumberland Gap. The path led more than 200,000 settlers—including many Scotch-Irish and German migrants from western Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia—to Kentucky by the end of the century. Ft. Harrod was established in 1773, and Harrodsburg became Kentucky’s first permanent settlement in 1774. Boone also established the Boonesborough fort in his name.
Virginia annexed Kentucky and made it a county of its colony in 1776. After the colonists won the Revolutionary War, Kentucky settlers began a separatist movement for independence from Virginia. On June 1, 1792, the Union admitted Kentucky as the 15th state.