City of Trails

New Franklin became known as the city where four trails meet through its connections to the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803-1806, the Boone's Lick Trail pioneered by Daniel Boone from Kentucky to Franklin, the beginning of William Becknell's Santa Fe Trail from Franklin in 1821, and the Katy Trail State Park opened in 1991 along abandoned Missouri-Kansas-Texas rail beds from St. Charles to Clinton. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traveled the Missouri River through the Boonslick area in 1804 on the expedition requested by President Thomas Jefferson, an expedition that opened the western frontier. The Boone's Lick Trail began at the Daniel Boone Settlement in southern St. Charles County as an old Indian trail, part of a pattern in which early Missouri explorers used Indian trails that became known as traces and were improved by white travelers marking trees; a trace became a road when wagons or stagecoaches could pass freely, and this route evolved into a segment of modern Highway 40 and later present Interstate 70. During 1816-1827 many petitions sought a road from St. Charles to Franklin, and Nathan Boone, son of Daniel Boone, was appointed in 1827 to survey it officially; the Boone's Lick Road was accepted as Missouri's State Road in 1828, and for the next 50 plus years virtually everyone going west followed it across Missouri to Franklin. The road took its name from the Boones after Col. Daniel Boone and his sons Daniel M. and Nathan discovered salt springs in Howard County and in 1807 hauled iron kettles there to make salt that was carried to St. Charles by the Missouri River, using the trail from St. Charles to Howard County that became known as Boone's Lick Trail. While the Boone's Lick Road ended at Franklin, William Becknell's Santa Fe Trail began there as the frontier moved farther west. In 1821 Becknell, a Franklin resident, advertised for 70 men for a trading expedition, but only eleven came; chosen captain, he led a pack train from Franklin on September 1, 1821, and returned in January 1822 after a 900-mile journey marked by problems with Indians, breakdowns, water shortages, and river crossings, bringing back reports of great profits from simple trade goods. On his second trip in 1822, Becknell took twenty-one men and three wagons of goods to Santa Fe and returned by a new route that reduced travel time between Franklin and Santa Fe to 45 days; the party carried merchandise worth $30,000 and returned with merchandise valued at $190,000. The trail's origin remained at Franklin until Missouri River flooding nearly washed the town away in 1826, after which starting points shifted to Boonville, Arrow Rock, and Independence, Missouri. In 1991 the Katy Trail State Park opened as a walking and bicycling trail, the longest in the country, running 225 miles across Missouri on former railroad rights of way.

New Franklin, Missouri · United States