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Warren County,
Missouri
About 200 years
ago, the Booneslick Trail – “Boone’s
Lick” in some texts – which crosses Warren
County, was traversed by Indians,
trappers and fur traders. Then, it was known
as the Light Horse Trail. In 1805, the sons of
pioneer Daniel Boone were responsible for
surveying and marking the trail. They
discovered animal salt licks along the trail,
and the trail was named for them. Twenty years
later, an average of 20 wagons and  carriages
were using the trail weekly, traveling due
west from St. Louis and St. Charles. In the
mid-1800s, the Booneslick Trail was the most
traveled road in Missouri, connecting St.
Louis to the great Santa Fe and Oregon trails
that led to California and Oregon.
That portion of the famed trail is the most
significant historical site in Warren County,
which was organized in 1833 from Montgomery
County, and named for Joseph Warren, a
Revolutionary War general. Today, there are
about 27,000 residents in the entire county,
which is located on the western edge of the
St. Louis Metropolitan Area.
About 5,000 residents live in Warrenton, the
county seat. Twenty miles southeast of
Warrenton is Marthasville, the oldest town in
the county. The town succeeded the French
village, La Charette, founded in 1766 at the
mouth of Charette Creek. Daniel Boone lived in
Charette in the last years of his life, later
moving to a house near Marthasville. The
people with Boone established the “Boone
Settlement,” the first major settlement of
Americans of European descent, west of the
Mississippi. A large chunk of the settlement
lies along the creeks and rivers in southern
Warren County. Germans, especially, were
attracted to the Boone Settlement, and by 1860
more than 38,000 Germans had settled in the
area.
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