Cumberland Gap - The Wayfarers

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Wed Mar 16, 2022, 05:52 AM - Edit history (1)

- Recorded live at Over Yonder Concert House, Toledo, Ohio. The 4-legged member-mascot also joined in.
"Cumberland Gap" (first recorded in 1924) is a popular folk song recorded & performed by American folk & bluegrass musicians such as Woody Guthrie & Earl Scruggs, & by British skiffle artists such as Lonnie Donegan & the Vipers Skiffle Group.




- The Cumberland Gap is a pass through the long ridge of the Cumberland Mountains, within the Appalachian Mountains, near the junction of the U.S. states of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. It is famous in American colonial history for its role as a key passageway through the lower central Appalachians. Long used by Native American nations, the Cumberland Gap was brought to the attention of settlers in 1750 by Thomas Walker, a Virginia physician and explorer. The path was used by a team of frontiersmen led by Daniel Boone, making it accessible to pioneers who used it to journey into the western frontiers of Kentucky and Tennessee.

It was an important part of the Wilderness Road and is now part of the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park..

The passage through Cumberland Gap was originally created by herds of woodland buffalo that traveled across it over thousands of years, drawn by the abundance of salt in the region. The passage created by the gap was well traveled by Native Americans long before the arrival of European settlers. The earliest written account of Cumberland Gap dates to the 1670s, by Abraham Wood of Virginia. Some time before 1748 Samuel Stalnaker is believed to have passed through the gap while exploring the region.

The gap was named for Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, son of King George II of Great Britain, who had many places named for him in the American colonies after the Battle of Culloden. The explorer Thomas Walker gave the name to the Cumberland River in 1750, and the name soon spread to many other features in the region, such as the Cumberland Gap. In 1769 Joseph Martin built a fort nearby at present-day Rose Hill, Virginia, on behalf of Walker's land claimants. But Martin and his men were chased out of the area by Native Americans, and Martin did not return until 1775...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumberland_Gap