Boone’s Lick State Historic Site

Salt was scarce and valuable on the frontier. In 1805 Nathan and Daniel Morgan Boone, sons of Daniel Boone, went into partnership with James and Jesse Morrison to make salt at a brine spring in what is now Howard County. The brine was boiled down in iron kettles over stone furnaces. It took 250 to 300 gallons to make one bushel, and the works turned out about 30 bushels a day, shipped by keelboat down the Missouri to St. Louis. In an 1851 interview Nathan Boone said it was he and his brother, not their father, who worked the lick.

The trail the brothers used from St. Charles became the Boone’s Lick Road, and thousands of settlers followed it to the Missouri Valley; its western end became the start of the Santa Fe Trail in 1821. Commercial salt making stopped in 1833. The state historic site has a picnic area and a short, steep trail down to the springs, where wood remnants of the saltworks and an iron kettle remain. Check before you go for hours.