FORT BOONESBOROUGH, Ky. — Keeping up a quick pace to the finish line, Curtis Penix didn’t look like someone who had walked nearly 240 miles in the footsteps of frontiersman Daniel Boone, an arduous trip through the Appalachian terrain that was inspired by his own family’s pioneering roots in the Kentucky wilderness.
The Michigan steel mill worker, toting a 40-pound backpack, completed his 16-day journey Thursday. It started in Tennessee, wound into Virginia and took him to hallowed ground in Kentucky – the place where Fort Boonesborough was built in 1775 after Boone and his band of ax men had carved out Boone Trace. The path became an important early artery for settlers heading westward.
“I can’t wait to sit down,” the 46-year-old Penix said after being greeted by family members and other supporters. “I haven’t had a soft chair in a long time. Physically, I feel fine. I feel like any other day I would get up for work. … I could keep going if I wanted, but I don’t want to.”
During his adventure, Penix slept outside, crossed rivers on foot, trudged through rain and mud and endured blistered feet.
He started his journey on March 10 near Kingsport, Tennessee – the same place where Boone’s group left in March 1775. Penix followed the famous frontiersman’s route into Virginia and through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky.
After five days of traveling alone, Penix was joined by walking companion Givan Fox, 42, near the Virginia-Kentucky border. Fox’s father, John Fox, is president of Friends of Boone Trace, a nonprofit group that hopes to preserve the historic route as a hiking trail and a memorial to the pioneers. “The American dream started on this road,” Penix said.
His trip was inspired by his fifth-great grandfather, Joshua Penix, who followed Boone Trace on his way to Fort Boonesborough.
“This is where Grandpa Joshua came in 1779,” Penix said. “So he would have been right here somewhere in this little area.”
His ancestor eventually acquired 1,400 acres near Paris in central Kentucky, but later parceled it off and sold it. Joshua Penix eventually became a plantation owner.
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