If you have ever wondered why the stretch of Missouri rolling west from Boone County into Howard, Cooper, and Saline counties carries the name Boonslick, the answer is older than Missouri statehood — and it begins with a spring.
In 1806, two brothers made their way to a cluster of salt springs in what is now western Howard County. They were Nathan Boone (1780–1856) and Daniel Morgan Boone (1769–1839), sons of the famous frontiersman Daniel Boone. What they built there — a commercial salt works on the banks of Salt Creek — gave this entire region its name. The 52-acre site where they worked is still there, still accessible, and still holding the physical remnants of what they left behind.
Salt in the Ground
Long before the Boone brothers arrived, the springs along Salt Creek were already drawing visitors. Animals had found the mineral-rich water first. As the National Park Service describes it, they “licked the ground nearby where salt had risen to the surface” — and that instinct is exactly where the word lick in the site’s name comes from. A salt lick was simply a place where salt worked its way up to where an animal, or a person, could get at it.
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had already noted the presence of many saltwater springs in this part of Missouri during their expedition, and the region’s potential as a source of mineral salt was not lost on early settlers. Salt was no luxury on the American frontier. It was essential for preserving meat through the winter, curing hides, and sustaining virtually every household on the edge of the continent. A dependable source of brine, close to navigable water, was a commercial opportunity of the first order.
Two Brothers, a Kettle, and a Keelboat
Nathan and Daniel Morgan Boone recognized that opportunity. Starting in 1806, the brothers began extracting salt from the springs using a boiling method: brine was drawn from the springs and heated in large iron kettles until the water boiled away, leaving behind crystallized salt. One of those kettles — a large, spherical cast iron vessel — still sits at the site today, alongside wooden posts that still rise from Salt Creek, silent evidence of the brothers’ infrastructure.
The National Park Service describes what they built as “a sizeable operation.” The salt they produced was loaded onto keelboats and shipped downriver to St. Louis, where it entered a regional trade network. Missouri State Parks puts the economic stakes plainly: “Timber and rolling green hills drew settlers to Cooper, Howard and Saline counties, but it was salt that made the area grow.”
The salt-making operation also relied on enslaved labor, as was common in Missouri’s early industrial salt works.
How a Spring Named a Region
The Boone brothers’ operation did something that outlasted the salt itself: it stamped a name onto the landscape. The area around the salt works quickly came to be called “Boone’s Lick Country,” a label that spread to encompass what we now think of as the Boonslick — the broad swath of central Missouri centered on the Missouri River corridor through Boone, Howard, Cooper, and Saline counties.
A road was cut from Franklin, Missouri, out to the salt lick, and this Boone’s Lick Road carried a significance no one at the time could have fully anticipated. In 1821, it became the first leg of the Santa Fe Trail, linking St. Charles to Santa Fe in a continuous overland route that would carry merchants, soldiers, and emigrants for decades. The road that started at a salt spring in Howard County became, in a very real sense, the first road west.
The site that gave the road its name — and through the road, gave the whole region its identity — is still there.
Visiting the Site Today
Boone’s Lick State Historic Site preserves what remains of the brothers’ operation on its 52 acres along Salt Creek. Three natural salt springs still flow at the site. The large spherical cast iron kettle the brothers used to boil brine is still on the grounds, as are the wooden posts rising from the creek. Outdoor exhibits interpret the salt industry and explain how a seasonal operation on a Howard County creek rippled outward to shape the identity of an entire region.
The site is located on Missouri Highway 187 near Boonesboro in Howard County, between the communities of Lisbon and Petersburg, not far from Arrow Rock. After a short hike in from the road, visitors reach the springs and the remaining salt works artifacts. Picnicking facilities are available on site.
For visitor information, call the site at 660-837-3330.
The spring that named the Boonslick is still out there, still seeping salt into Salt Creek. The kettle the Boone brothers used to turn that brine into something worth loading onto a keelboat is still there too. It is the kind of place where you can stand and understand exactly why this particular patch of ground put its name on everything around it.
Sources: National Park Service — Boone’s Lick State Historic Site; Missouri State Parks — Boone’s Lick State Historic Site