As European colonists explored westward from Virginia, they regarded this region as wilderness, yet they relied on trails first made by native people and on traces formed by bison and other large animals. When Dr. Thomas Walker’s party entered what is now Kentucky through the Cumberland Gap, they followed an existing trail known as the War Road or Warriors’ Path, and later explorers and colonists used it as well. In 1775, Daniel Boone blazed a trail into Kentucky using parts of the Warrior’s Path and other trails, and Boone’s Trace passed about three miles east of here. In the years that followed, thousands of settlers traveled Boone’s Trace, tripling Kentucky’s population by the time it became the 15th state in 1792. In 1795, the Kentucky legislature ordered a wagon road from Crab Orchard, Kentucky, to Virginia through the Cumberland Gap. Following portions of Boone’s Trace but taking a different route through this area, then called the Rockcastle Hills, that road became known as the Wilderness Road. During the early 1800s, the Wilderness Road was the most direct route for commerce moving into and out of Kentucky. Although other western routes opened later in the century, the road remained important in the Civil War. Confederate strategists viewed it as a means of reaching the Bluegrass region and ultimately territory north of the Ohio River, while for the Union it offered a route to the South and to the Confederate supply line. In the late summer of 1861, Union forces established Camp Wildcat at the junction of the Wilderness Road and the road to Richmond and Lexington. When Confederate troops attacked the hilltop camp on October 21, 1861, they were unable to drive the Union soldiers from the Rockcastle Hills, and Confederate General Zollicoffer later called Camp Wildcat “a natural fortification, almost inaccessible.” The Wilderness Road and Camp Wildcat remained significant throughout the war as control of this stretch of road shifted between Confederate and Union forces.