Buffalo Traces: The First Paths Through This Valley

Before there was a road here, before there was even a house, this valley was part of a vast animal highway. Long ago, herds of American bison moved across what is now Kentucky, searching for grass and salty springs. As they returned to the same places year after year, their hooves pressed deep paths into the ground. People later called these paths “buffalo traces” or “buffalo roads.”

Many years later, native nations and then early explorers and settlers learned and use these traces, as the animals had already solved the hard problem of the landscape: where to cross rivers, which ridges were easiest to climb, and how to avoid deep mud and thick brush.

Over time, some of the busiest traces were widened into wagon roads and, eventually, into parts of the modern road network we use today. Major traces crossed the Ohio River at the Falls of the Ohio near Louisville and ran into the Bluegrass region, shaping how people entered and moved through this area of Kentucky. As you stand here on Harrods Old Trace, you’re in a landscape whose routes were first sketched not on paper, but by hooves in the soil.