04/28/2026
Since I am in what feels like a forever state of waiting for the final approvals to start producing our Hot Sauce, I thought I would revisit what the name Boonslick Spice Co is meant to honor. A region I not only call home, but one that helped shape the US. Hard work, perseverance, and adventure are at the heart of what we are about.
In 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark observed saltsprings in the area on their famous voyage upriver. The springs were called licks because here as elsewhere, animals liked to lick the salty residue around the springs.
In 1805, Nathan and Daniel M. Boone, sons of the famous frontiersman, started a business at one of the licks, and it was called by their name. They evaporated the water by boiling it in kettles, then shipped the distilled salt by keelboat to St. Louis. The Boone brothers also blazed an overland trail to their saltspring from St. Charles, a route that came to be known as the Boone's Lick Trail. Their business lasted about a quarter-century, the period in which American settlers flooded into the region. Because the Boone brothers' lick was the source of a necessary commodity and because the westward trail was named for the lick, the surrounding region itself (what are now the counties of Howard, Cooper, Saline, Boone, Chariton, and Randolph) came to be known as "the Boone's Lick."
From fewer than one thousand Americans in 1805, the population of the Boone's Lick swelled to about 33,000 in 1830 (a quarter of the state population), 95,000 in 1860 (10 percent of the state population), and 143,000 in 1880 (7 percent of the state population). If one excludes Boone County, where the city of Columbia grew around the main state university. Most of the oldest municipalities in the Boone's Lick (Boonville, Glasgow, Fayette, Brunswick, Marshall, Huntsville, Keytesville).
