If you’ve ever wondered why this whole stretch of the Missouri River — Rocheport included — gets called the Boonslick, or Boonslick Country, the answer isn’t some marketing invention. It’s a literal salt spring, about forty minutes from here up in Howard County, and it’s still there for you to walk up to.
Long before anyone from Missouri had heard the name Boone, Native peoples already knew this spot on Salt Creek, where three natural salt springs come together. Salty ground draws deer, elk, and bison looking for minerals, and that made it a natural hunting ground too, according to the National Park Service.
In 1806, Nathan and Daniel Morgan Boone — two of Daniel Boone’s own sons — saw the same springs and thought business, not hunting. They set up a commercial salt works right on the largest spring: big cast-iron kettles, wood fires, and the slow work of boiling spring water down until only crystallized salt was left. It became a real operation, big enough to ship its salt downriver by keelboat to markets in St. Louis, according to Missouri State Parks.
That salt works did more than make the Boone brothers money. It put a name on the map. Settlers started calling the surrounding country “Boone’s Lick Country” — a lick being the old word for a salt spring animals (and people) come to lick — and the name stuck to the whole region, us included. The road that hauled goods and people out to the salt works, Boone’s Lick Road, became more than a supply route. When the Santa Fe Trail got its start in 1821, Boone’s Lick Road formed its very first leg, linking St. Charles all the way out toward Santa Fe, per the Park Service. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had already noted the area’s saltwater springs when they passed through years earlier, and once the salt trade opened this country up, the Boonslick became one of the biggest draws for westward settlers in the early 1800s.
None of that happened by accident — it happened because two brothers with a famous last name figured out how to turn spring water into a business, and the road they built to move their salt ended up moving a lot more than that.
The site itself is still there, and it’s an easy afternoon trip if you want to see where it started. Boone’s Lick State Historic Site sits on Highway 187 in Boonesboro (that’s the official site address, not a typo — it’s spelled differently from the county), a 52-acre patch of woods holding all three original springs and the visible remains of the old salt works, including one of the original big cast-iron kettles used to boil the water down. There’s a walking trail through the woods, picnic spots, and outdoor exhibits that lay out how, in the Park Service’s words, “salt became big business in the ‘Boone’s Lick Country.’” No admission fee — like all Missouri state parks and historic sites, it’s free to walk in.
Next time you tell someone you’re from the Boonslick, you’ll know exactly which spring earned it the name — and where to go stand next to it.
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