Memorial to the Start Westward

The Memorial to the Start Westward commemorates the beginning of westward American expansion — a theme of profound significance in West Virginia because this Appalachian state sat at the very edge of the original frontier. The Proclamation Line of 1763, established by the British after the Seven Years' War, ran approximately through the Appalachian ridge and prohibited American colonists from settling west of the mountains. The lands that became West Virginia were at the vanguard of illegal settlement that eventually drove British-Native alliances and contributed to the causes of the American Revolution.

Daniel Boone, one of America's most famous frontier figures, explored and settled in the regions that are now West Virginia and Kentucky. The Kanawha Valley in West Virginia was a major pathway for settlers moving westward through the Cumberland Gap and along river routes into Kentucky and beyond. Early West Virginia was truly the jumping-off point — the last edge of the eastern colonial world before the vast, unknown interior of the continent. Settlers who passed through carried with them everything needed to build new lives from wilderness.

The westward expansion that began in the Appalachian foothills carried enormous consequences: the displacement of Indigenous peoples across the continent, the extension of slavery into new territories, and ultimately the violent resolution of the question of slavery in the Civil War. West Virginia's unique position in this history — as a state formed in opposition to slavery's expansion and Confederate secession — gives a westward expansion memorial here a layered significance. It honors the courage of pioneers while existing in a state whose very birth was shaped by the contradictions and conflicts that westward movement produced.