Boone Trail Highway Marker (#34), Hendersonville
This Boone Trail Highway marker is a Style-1 tablet on display in the Henderson County Heritage Museum. The steel Style-1 tablet was primarily used from 1917 through 1921 and is normally distinguished by the lack of any Boone Trail Highway caption. It contains an image in relief taken from Alonzo Chapel’s 1861 illustration of Daniel Boone and his hunting dog. It was originally attached to a pyramid shaped structure of local stone. The structure which stood at the southeast corner of the Henderson County Courthouse was dismantled when the building was remodeled in 2005.
This Boone Highway marker was numbered 34 by Everett G. Marshall. His interest and research of the markers led to the book, Rich Man, Daniel Boone. The numbering system was simply the order in which he found or became aware of a marker.
METAL FROM BATTLESHIP MAINE IN TABLET / DANIEL BOONE
Henderson County Heritage Museum
October 27, 1921
35.314440 , -82.460170
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"Henderson County Courthouse," Hendersonville Historic Preservation Commission, www.hendersonvillehpc.org, (accessed July 14, 2017) Link
"J. Hampton Rich," from the "Images of North Carolina" digital collection, Davie County Public Library, (accessed January 21, 2015) Link
Jones, H.G. “Rich, Joseph Hampton,” NCPedia.org, (accessed March 22, 1917) Link
Jones, Randell. “Markers for Boone’s Trail Have Rich History,” Journal West (Winston-Salem, NC) November 26, 2013, (accessed March 13, 2017) Link
Marshall, Everett G. Rich Man: Daniel Boone (Dugspur, VA: Sugar Tree Enterprises, 2003)
Stanford, Raney. “Shades of Dan’l Boone! Says J.H. Rich,” The Daily Tarheel (Chapel Hill, NC), February 8, 1948
“Boone Tablet for Henderson County Courthouse Lawn,” Asheville Citizen-Times (Asheville, NC), October 30, 1921
“Daniel Boone Trail Marker #34 – Hendersonville, NC,” Waymarking.com, (accessed March 15, 2017) Link
“The Boone Tablet,” Winston Salem Journal (Winston-Salem, NC), May 17, 1916
Yes
Steel
Boone Trail Highway and Memorial Association
J. Hampton Rich was a well-known figure in North Carolina’s “Good Roads Movement” during the early 20th Century when public pressure was used to force enhancements in the public highway system. Attaining minor celebrity status he eventually extended his vision beyond the borders of his home state. Using the legacy of Daniel Boone as a hook, he first began to cross North Carolina and then the United States drumming up support for commemorative highway markers. Between 1917 and 1938 Rich was one of the most prolific commemorators in the United States. He claimed responsibility for hundreds of markers, some in places that had no connection to Boone at all like Washington, D.C.; Boston, Massachusetts; Pike’s Peak, Colorado and at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
Rich was born in 1874 on land where the family of Daniel Boone may have once lived. What is certain though is that Daniel Boone spent many of his 21 years in North Carolina living in the area near Mocksville in Davie County and surely Rich's lifelong passion for Boone was influenced by his immersion in local lore surrounding the famous frontiersman. Rich, who became a well-known newspaper man in Winston-Salem, also developed a passion for good highways in the state. Very likely taking a lead from a series of markers to Boone placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution beginning in 1912, Rich combined his two passions and came to the idea of capitalizing on the pioneer’s fame as a way to encourage the building of better roads.
In 1913, Rich established the Boone Trail Highway and Memorial Association with the chief purpose to raise awareness of the need for better roads in North Carolina. Rich also wanted to educate the public about the history and heritage of the pioneer era and promote patriotism. Beginning with the first documented marker, placed at East Bend in Yadkin County in 1917,
Rich claimed to have placed about 360 tablets across the United States by 1938. Of that number, (which came from Rich) less than 60 originals are still known to exist and it may be impossible to ever know how many were actually incorporated into a highway memorial. Although it is known that he sold some in the early years Riches method of operation was typically to give a tablet, sometimes multiple tablets, to a community with their promise to raise funds to erect the highway marker. In some cases it was years before a marker was ever constructed and it is almost certain that many markers were never completed. The number of markers with documented proof of being completed is less than 150. As more digitally preserved newspapers from the period become available this number will likely increase.
Each tablet with the image of Daniel Boone includes wording that it contains metal from the Battleship USS Maine sunk in Havana harbor in 1898 at the outset of the Spanish-American War. In 1916 with the help of then Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, Rich had acquired 300 pounds of metal salvaged from the ship. It is questionable that each plaque actually contained some of this metal. In a 1948 article from “The Daily Tar Heel” Rich is quoted as saying “the first tablets contained... metal from the battleship.” In addition to those featuring Daniel Boone, Rich also created tablets featuring “Cherokee Chief Sequoia” and a bison in an effort to mark ancient buffalo traces used by Native American and then Colonial settlers from the coast at Wilmington through the Great Smoky Mountains in the west. Very few of these were produced and few examples remain. Other efforts include tablets to Abraham Lincoln and possibly Davey Crockett. Regardless of the image on the tablet, these are lumped together under the heading of Boone Trail Highway and Memorial Association markers. The best current resource is Rich Man: Daniel Boone by Gary Marshall. His research efforts and the book’s publication in 2003 generated interest in finding and protecting the remaining markers.
Rich lived in Chapel Hill in the years prior to his death in 1949 where he could be seen “striding down the village streets wearing his coon skin cap and maybe with his long rifle thrown over one arm.” He was also "apt any day to walk into one of the University’s history classes clad in his furry cap, and always on these occasions he is introduced to the students by the professors as Daniel Boone."
The tablet can be found in the Henderson County Heritage Museum (Old Henderson County Courthouse) at 1 Historic Courthouse Square, Hendersonville NC. Several monuments stand on the courthouse building grounds, including Revolutionary Soldiers Memorial, Union Soldiers Monument, War Memorial, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Confederate Soldier Memorial, Vietnam War, Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan monuments.
The memorial tablet is on display inside the Henderson County Heritage Museum (Old Henderson County Courthouse.)
The memorial tablet was originally attached to a stone structure outside of the old courthouse which now houses the Henderson County Heritage Museum. The Boone Highway tablet was moved to an inside display when the courthouse was remodeled in 2005.
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