From: http://www.clayfamilies.com/History.html

Later research has shown that long before Daniel Boone, Dr. Thomas Walker and his party of explorers 
traveled the Warrior’s Path through Clay County in May of 1750. But even Walker, who was clearly in 
the county 19 years before Daniel Boone, was not the first known white man to trek in the county. 
That distinction belongs to a little-known explorer named Gabriel Arthur, who as a captive of Indians, 
was taken along the Warrior’s Path and into Tennessee in 1674, and later walked it on his way to freedom. 
The respected Knox County historian, Elmer Decker, wrote, “The first white man to ever set foot in 
Knox County and Kentucky was Gabriel Arthur, 1674. . . .”

Decker made his assumption based on numerous historical accounts of Arthur’s time in Kentucky that 
had him traveling along the Warrior’s Path. This story is covered in detail by Robert Kincaid in 
“The Wilderness Road,” a much-quoted history published in 1947 by the Bobbs Merrill Company that 
has been a primary source for countless articles on Southeast Kentucky history. Arthur was eventually 
set free by his captors and set out on a trail that led to the south. “There was no danger of his 
getting lost in the vast wilderness lying west of the Appalachian range which never before had been 
penetrated by a white man,” Kincaid wrote. “The trail was well defined, called by the Indians the 
Athawominee, or the ‘Path of the Armed Ones.’”

On the next page of Kincaid’s book is a map of the Warrior’s Path that shows it running along the 
path described by Decker, and which has it running along a north/south path that would go through 
what would become Clay County. This map corresponds with one of the earliest maps of Kentucky, 
by John Filson, in 1784, and numerous others in various publications.

 The Warrior’s Path has been known since the first white men started drawing maps of Kentucky. 
From the south, it entered Clay County via the “War Gap” on the ridge that separated the 
Kentucky River drainage from the Cumberland River drainage, i.e. between the headwaters of 
Otter Creek in Clay County and the headwaters of Road Fork of Stinking Creek in Knox County. 
In 1806 the act that created Clay County designated the southern boundary in part: 
“--thence along the dividing ridge between the waters of Cumberland and Kentucky to a point from 
which by running due east will pass by Collin’s Fork of Goose Creek, midway between Outlaw’s salt 
works and Peter Hammonds’; thence a course to strike the ridge between Cumberland and Kentucky at War Gap.”

The path in Clay County runs northward from the War Gap to Clay Gap on the Clay/Owsley County line. 
Knox County historian Elmer Decker wrote: “The Warrior’s Path led south from Limestone (Maysville) 
almost a direct route to Cumberland Ford [Pineville], across Clear Creek, and up Yellow Creek to 
Cumberland Gap. Northern tribes of Indians made the trail, and it was much traveled by them. 
Later it was used by pioneers and settlers, as were its branches down Straight Creek and elsewhere.” 
The route of the Warrior’s Path has long since stopped being questioned except in a few small areas. 
There is an official Kentucky highway historical marker at Gray Hawk in Jackson County that has the 
path going along War Fork in extreme eastern Jackson County, which corresponds to the research of 
James F. Bowman, who has the path going from Clay County into Owsley County then crossing into 
Jackson County east of Gray Hawk. This marker reports that the path was used by Gabrel Arthur in 1674 , 
and much later (in 1750), by Dr. Thomas Walker, and following them, Christoper Gist (1751) and much later, 
John Finley and Daniel Boone.