In 1775, after Richard Henderson's Transylvania Company had obtained thousands of acres from the Cherokee in the land bounded by the Kentucky, Cumberland, and Ohio rivers, Henderson needed a trail west of the Appalachian Mountains that could accommodate pack horses and encourage settlers to buy land in the vast wilderness. Henderson and his backers hired Daniel Boone to undertake the project, and Boone led a party of more than thirty free white men, enslaved black men, and at least two women, including an enslaved black woman and Boone's daughter Susannah, the wife of a crew member. Following game, Indian, and long hunter trails and cutting trees and cane where necessary, Boone's crew took a month to cut the trail from Long Island on the Holston River, present-day Kingsport, Tennessee, to this site. On April 1, 1775, the survivors arrived where Boone and Henderson had decided a fort would be built, Boonesborough, called the first capital of the west. Boone Trace opened the first trail for pioneer traffic into what would become Kentucky, made it possible for settlers to traverse the dangerous unknown and begin new lives, carried more than 200,000 pioneers into Kentucky, and served travelers until the Wilderness Road, which evolved out of Boone Trace, became the main wagon route after 1796.