Boone’s Cave Park

Located on the Yadkin River north of Salisbury, Boone’s Cave Park was established in 1909 and commemorates the location where Daniel Boone’s family was rumored to winter for the first time in North Carolina after moving south from Pennsylvania in 1752.

Although Daniel Boone is known primarily as a Kentucky frontiersman, he also lived in the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina for 21 years where he developed his skills as a hunter and trapper and raised a family with his wife Rebecca Bryan. Both a Freemason and Virginia legislator, Boone was a contemporary of George Washington and embodied the best and worst aspects of European expansion beyond the Appalachian mountains.

I visited the park while on my way to Charlotte last month. While the 110 acres are well-marked, none of the trails are particularly long. A small outcropping along the river’s edge is called Baptism Rock, so I stopped there, watched the water flow by for a few minutes, and took the photograph above.