Barbourville, KY
During Daniel Boone Festival week, people pause from the business of daily life to focus their attention on their Kentucky ancestors who settled along the Wilderness Road and on the long-hunt who preceded them. Best know of all the heroes of the first American western frontier, Daniel Boone became famous all over the world for the adventures he experienced in this region of southeastern Kentucky.
Knox County’s Daniel Boone Festival is the oldest continuous celebration in the state honoring the man who embodied the pioneer spirit of Kentucky. The festival was made a Kentucky Corporation with the aim of ensuring that no other community could lay claim to the idea which annually brings thousands of visitors and participants into the city of Barbourville.
The festival was created in 1948 by Union College professor Karl Bleyl as a deliberate attempt to challenge mass media’s demeaning images of Kentuckians by replacing negative stereotypes with an heroic model of frontier adventure. Dr. Bleyl intended the festival educate young people about their ancestors’ crossing the Cumberland Gap into an untamed beautiful land and about the Native American tribes who were here before them.