It was 250 years ago in early 1770, while liberty-minded American colonists in Boston were confronted by British soldiers in what became the Boston Massacre, that another story important to the origins of America was unfolding across the Appalachian Mountains. Daniel Boone was on his first expedition through the Cumberland Gap, exploring the wilderness frontier in Kentucky, writing another episode of our becoming America. (This story is a companion to “The Boston Massacre, 1770.”

BecomingAmerica250.com is a new project to help people touch history where it happened during the 250th anniversary of a Southern colonial odyssey, 1769 to 1789 as we were becoming America.