Bison and other game animals searching for food, salt, and water in the old-growth forest established paths through Cumberland Gap, a notch in the Appalachian Mountains created by geologic forces that formed a natural corridor for large herds moving from one part of the country to another. By following this opening through the mountains, they created and hardened broad trails through the Gap, and their abundance made the area a rich hunting ground. The animals provided American Indians with food and furs, as well as material for clothing, weapons, tools, and adornments. Daniel Boone, impressed by their numbers, wrote in 1787 of an abundance of wild beasts in the vast forest, with buffalo more numerous than cattle on other settlements, hundreds in a drove, and amazing numbers around the salt springs. Long after the bison were gone, vestiges of their paths remained, and in 1819 these roads opened by the animals were called among Kentucky’s national curiosities, generally wide enough for a carriage or wagon way, with trees and shrubs trampled down by the irresistible force of the herds. An early pioneer also recalled that a broad, hard, firm trace leading from a stockade was a priceless boon to travelers and pioneers, though it only seemed to be made by human skill and had in fact been formed by buffaloes over a thousand years in their journeys to the salt licks.