County of marker: Cooper County
Location of marker: foot of 1st St., just S. of Spring St., Boonville
Marker erected: 2010
Marker erected by: Missouri Department of Natural Resources
Marker Text:
From Boone's Lick to Boonville
The Boonslick Region has influences Missouri history far out of proportion to its size. The rich land is an ecological intersection, where eastern forest and the Ozark mountains meet prairie, and a large, navigable river runs through the middle. Climate and soil are so favorable that a famous tale claimed you could plant a crowbar at night and ten-penny nails would sprout by morning. The Missouri River and Boonslick and Santa Fe Trails were history-defining travel routes for western explorers, travelers and settlers.
The Boonslick began with Boone's Salt Lick, origin of the region's name and beginning of its prosperity. Frontiersman Daniel Boone came to Missouri in 1799, to accept a Spanish Land Grant. * Sons Nathan and Daniel Morgan Boone, along with James and Jesse Morrison, started a salt-making operation in 1805, just two years after Louisiana Territory became part of the United States. The salt lick attracted settlement and a road, The Boonslick Trail, from St. Charles. An 1814 map by William Clark noted 400 people living in the Boonslick, most from Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. The War of 1812 brought several years of bloodshed to the region.
In 1816, when hostilities ended, Franklin was founded on the Missouri River. For a decade, Franklin was Missouri's second most important city after St. Louis and the start of the Santa Fe Trail.
In quick succession, Boonville (1817), Fayette (1823), New Franklin (1828), Arrow Rock (1829), Rocheport (1832), Glasgow (1836), and at the edges of the Boonslick, Columbia (1821) and Marshall (1840), sprang up as market towns. Located on a bluff across the river from Franklin, Boonville took Franklin's place when floods washed that town away in the 1820s. Ten years later, Boonville was second to St. Louis in population and wealth. Boonslick agriculture started with corn and hogs, then added wheat and cattle. Slavery powered the Boonlsick economy, Among other products, slave labor produced tobacco and hemp, much of it traded via steamboat to southern states, where hemp rope was used to bale cotton.
Railroad and Civil War ended the Boonslick empire. Without slaves, large-scale hemp and tobacco production declined, and hemp substitutes were found for rope. Many former slaves stayed in the region. Until a migration of blacks to urban centers in the 1900s, around 30 percent of the Boonslick population was African-American. Railroad pulled the economy away from the river that was the heart of the Boonslick. Gradual decline preserved early homes, building s and main streets of the region. The Boonslick is noteworthy today for historic towns, former residents Dr. John Sappington, artist George Caleb Bingham and Santa Fe Trail merchant William Becknell, and its place in early Missouri history.