John B. Stephenson Walking Trail

Walk in Daniel Boone’s footsteps!

Experience Berea’s newest addition to our shared use trail system. Beginning at the Berea Municipal Utilities lot, this trail will eventually connect with the hiking trails at Indian Fort Mountain. Suitable for walking, running, strollers, bikes and wheelchairs, this path is level and paved, with benches and picnic tables along the way.

From the bridge, looking southwest, can be seen the confluence of Silver Creek and the Brushy Fork Branch of Silver Creek. This marks the crossing point where Daniel Boone and his 30 “axemen” forded the creek while blazing the trail from Long Island on the Holston River (now Kingsport, Tennessee), through the Cumberland Gap to Boonesborough in the months of March and April 1775.

This was the first road ever into Kentucky and west of the Appalachian Mountains and was of enormous historical significance to the founding of Kentucky and the opening of the west. It became known as Boone Trace; and by 1792, when Kentucky was established as a state, approximately 200,000 settlers had passed along the Trace.

Boone entered what is now Madison County through Boone Gap located at the Madison/Rockcastle County line and then followed the Brushy Fork Branch of Silver Creek which can be followed along the paved path to the west of the bridge. If you cross the bridge to the east, you will be following his path which led to the Blue Lick area on his way to Boonesborough.