This site was probably originally a salt lick used by buffalo, which made the path to it, and American Indians later used that path in warfare between northern and southern tribes. Early American explorers and hunters also traveled it, finding animals gathered around the lick, and once the salty water became known, entrepreneurs came to manufacture valuable salt. The salty water was likely discovered here because of the site's proximity to the Warrior’s Path, a north-south trail used for centuries by American Indians and by buffalo searching for salt licks. When early explorers entered Kentucky through the Cumberland Gap, they followed this well-marked route along Otter Creek, Goose Creek, and Sextons Creek across present-day Clay County. The first known person of European descent to use the path here was Gabriel Arthur, who in 1673, after being captured in present-day Tennessee and taken to present-day Ohio, was released and told to follow the path back. Dr. Thomas Walker, credited with discovering the Cumberland Gap, passed this site in May 1750 after building a small structure on the Cumberland River near present-day Barbourville, and in his diary recorded more than 100 buffalo at a lick near present-day Paces Creek just upstream. Daniel Boone next used the path on his first extended hunting expedition in Kentucky in 1769, and about 15 years later returned to Goose Creek as a surveyor for a large tract that included present-day Manchester. During the Civil War, especially in late summer 1862, nearly 10,000 Union soldiers under Brig. Gen. George Morgan marched by here from Cumberland Gap during the Magnificent Retreat, camped nearby for two days, and because the trail's rough condition slowed wagons, Morgan ordered 100 wagons burned so his troops could stay ahead of pursuing Confederates. During that stop, a local soldier, Lewis Stivers, shot a fellow soldier, was court-martialed, and was executed. A few months later Union forces ordered the Goose Creek Salt Works and others upstream destroyed to keep salt from the enemy, and the salt industry never recovered. Throughout the Civil War both sides foraged along the trail and used it to move troops and supplies between the Cumberland Gap and the Bluegrass, but after the war the old trail faded from use and memory as new roads and eventually the railroad were built.