In 1750, early surveyors for the Ohio Company, possibly including Christopher Gist, passed through the gap. Many hunters used the gap to cross into Kentucky from Virginia for the next ten years. In 1774, Daniel Boone used the gap to cross into Kentucky, along with Michael Stoner, to warn the land surveyors of a possible attack from the Shawnee Indians. Boone referred to Pound Gap as Sounding Gap. Circa 1800, some the first pioneer families of eastern Kentucky came to Kentucky through Pound Gap. In Letcher County today are hundreds of the descendants of these pioneers. It was seven families who first came here around 1798: the Adamses; the Webbs, the Caudills; the Crafts; the Hammonds, the Sturgills, and the Collinses. The Hoggs, Maggards, Wrights, Fraziers, Fieldses, Bates, Halls, Bentleys, and Hamptons followed closely after the first settlement.