Did you know one of America’s oldest highways runs through the heart of Clay County?
The Warrior’s Path — called Athiamiowee or “the Path of the Armed Ones” by the Shawnee — once connected the Shawnee to the north and the Cherokee to the south. For centuries, Native peoples and even buffalo carved this trail across our hills.
By the late 1700s, it became part of the Wilderness Road, the gateway that carried thousands of settlers through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky.
Today, when we walk these hills and valleys, we are still tracing the footsteps of countless generations before us. The Warrior’s Path reminds us that Clay County’s story is deeply tied to the movement, meeting, and sometimes clashing of cultures — a story of endurance, passage, and connection that shaped Kentucky’s past and still echoes in its present.
