Others, almost as adventurous, were pushing into the neighborhood of the French villages on the Wabash and in the Illinois.

At Louisville men were already planning to colonize the country just opposite on the Ohio, under the law of the State of Virginia, which rewarded the victorious soldiers of Clark's famous campaign with grants in the region they had conquered.
Movement of Settlers to Kentucky.
The great growth of the west took place in Kentucky.

The Kentucky country was by far the most widely renowned for its fertility; it was much more accessible and more firmly held, and its government was on a more permanent footing than was the case in the Wabash, Illinois, and Cumberland regions.

In consequence the majority of the men who went west to build homes fixed their eyes on the vigorous young community which lay north of the Ohio, and which already aspired to the honors of statehood.
The Wilderness Road to Kentucky.
The immigrants came into Kentucky in two streams, following two different routes--the Ohio River, and Boone's old Wilderness Trail.
Those who came overland, along the latter road, were much fewer in number than those who came by water; and yet they were so numerous that the trail at times was almost thronged, and much care had to be taken in order to find camping places where there was enough feed for the horses.
The people who travelled this wilderness road went in the usual backwoods manner, on horseback, with laden packtrains, and often with their herds and flocks.

Young men went out alone or in parties; and groups of families from the same neighborhood often journeyed together.
They struggled over the narrow, ill-made roads which led from the different back settlements, until they came to the last outposts of civilization east of the Cumberland Mountains; scattered block-houses, whose owners were by turns farmers, tavern-keepers, hunters, and Indian fighters.