Early history route from Virginia to KentuckyThe earliest written account of Cumberland Gap dates to the 1670s, by
Abraham Wood of Virginia. Sometime before 1748,
Samuel Stalnaker is believed to have passed through the gap while exploring the region. The gap was named for
Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, son of King
George II of Great Britain, who had many places named for him in the American colonies after the
Battle of Culloden. The explorer
Thomas Walker gave the name to the
Cumberland River in 1750, and the name soon spread to many other features in the region, such as the Cumberland Gap. In 1769
Joseph Martin built a fort nearby at present-day
Rose Hill, Virginia, on behalf of Walker's land claimants. But Martin and his men were chased out of the area by Native Americans, and Martin did not return until 1775. In 1775
Daniel Boone, hired by the
Transylvania Company, arrived in the region leading a company of men to widen the path through the gap to make settlement of Kentucky and Tennessee easier. On his arrival, Boone discovered that Martin had already arrived in
Powell Valley, where Martin and his men were clearing land for their own settlement – the westernmost settlement in English colonial America at the time. By the 1790s, the trail that Boone and his men built had been widened to accommodate wagon traffic and became known as the
Wilderness Road.
19th century It is estimated that between 200,000 and 300,000 European-American settlers passed through the gap on their way into Kentucky and the
Ohio Valley before 1810. Several
American Civil War engagements occurred in and around the Cumberland Gap and are known as the
Battle of the Cumberland Gap. In June 1862,
Union Army General
George W. Morgan captured the gap for the
Union. In September of that year,
Confederate States Army forces under
Edmund Kirby Smith occupied the gap during General
Braxton Bragg's
Kentucky Invasion. The following year, in
a bloodless engagement in September 1863, Union Army troops under General
Ambrose Burnside forced the surrender of 2,300 Confederates defending the gap, gaining Union control of the gap for the remainder of the war.
20th century at the Pinnacle Interpretive Shelter during his visit to Cumberland Gap National Historical Park to attend the dedication of the park's Visitor Center (Mission 66 project) in July 1959 in 1991 The gap and associated historic resources were listed on the
National Register of Historic Places as a
historic district on May 28, 1980.
U.S. Route 25E passed overland through the gap before the completion of the
Cumberland Gap Tunnel in 1996. The original trail was then restored. A s of 1996, 18,000 cars pass beneath the site daily, and 1.2 million people visit the park on the site annually. The park features many hiking trails. ==Biology and ecology==