Meadow Creek Trail

Excerpted from "Prehistoric Trails of the Upper Cumberland River Basin" 

By Charles Mayer Dupier, Jr. 

"This trail leads from the Watts Creek Trail to the mouth of Meadow Creek in eastern Whitley County. 
Thomas Walker followed this trail during his exploration of Kentucky in 1750.
There are two possible routes for this trail. One route would make it an eastward extension of the 
Thunderstruck Shoals Trail. The other, about four miles to the south, would take it up Brown's Creek. 
The former route would follow up Tye's Fork Creek from Rockholds, across a low divide and down a 
small branch to Meadow Creek (a distance of about five miles). The trail would then have followed 
the east side of Meadow Creek to its confluence with the Cumberland River.

The other possible route would have been up Brown's Creek, down Whetstone Creek to a point about 
a mile from the confluence of that stream with the Cumberland River, then it turned overland to 
Meadow Creek, and down that stream to its mouth. 

Walker's description of the route he followed leaves much to be desired: "We crossed Indian Creek 
[Watts Creek] and Went down Meadow Creek to the River. "(42) The brief narrative does not mention 
going up Watts Creek to the intersection of the trails and then heading eastward to Meadow Creek. 
But it would be logical to assume that as he came down the Watts Creek Trail several days before 
and headed westward on the Thunderstruck Shoals Trail he would have noted that the east-west trail 
continued eastward, the direction he would later want to go to return to his camp on the Cumberland River. 
Or, it could have been his opinion that the Brown's Creek route would be a short-cut to his destination. 

It should be noted that both these routes appear on the Reconnaissance maps cited above. 
They are, in fact, the only two roads which lead from Watts Creek to Meadow Creek. The Tye's Fork route 
would be a logical extension of the Thunderstruck Trail, and the shortest distance between the 
McCreary County settlements and the Croley-Evans site. The Brown's Creek route would have been the 
shortest distance between the Upton site at Williamsburg and the Croley-Evans site. 

It is not known if the trail leading from the Meadow Creek Trail to the Croley-Evans site followed 
the river upstream or cut across the low divide to the east of the Meadow Creek Trail. 
Reason would suggest that a site as significant as Croley-Evans, containing a platform mound and a rather 
large village, would not be isolated from communication routes or lie on a dead-end trail. 
When Thomas Walker reached the mouth of Meadow Creek on April 27, 1750, he probably followed a trail 
northward along the river to his campsite. He notes in his journal, "Below the mouth of the Creek, 
and above the mouth are the remains of Several Indian Cabbins [sic] and amongst them a round Hill 
made by Art about 20 feet high and 60 over the Top. We went up the River and Camped on the Bank. "
This is a description of the Croley-Evans site. Whether Walker was following an existing trail or 
blazing his way through the wilderness is not known; but to have seen the site so clearly he had to 
have passed very nearby, perhaps on a trail that led through it to points upriver, ultimately Barbourville."