Discusses colonial America's need for a route to the west, how the Wilderness Road developed, early explorers and settlements along its path, and the impact it had on western expansion.

In 1775, while traveling with her family from Virginia to Kentucky, and joined by another family along the way, eleven-year-old Elizabeth reads Gulliver's Travels to the children and keeps a journal of their adventures, which include a runaway slave, encounters with Cherokees, and a near-fatal accident.

Explores the history of westward expansion, ignited by Daniel Boone's clearing of the Wilderness Road.

"This book traces Dahlman's 2013 trek over the 275-mile trail from Sycamore Shoals, near Elizabethton, Tennessee, to Fort Boonesborough, Kentucky. Initially undertaken after the death of his wife, Dahlman's account interweaves the history of the places he traverses with personal reflections and dozens of profiles and conversations with people he meets along the way. He questions how the Wilderness Road devolved from an important early American route predating Lewis and Clark to the humble footpath, both paved and wild, that now meanders through Southern Appalachia"--