As the new nation of the United States of America experienced growing pains and began to speak of Manifest Destiny, Virginia, too, found its role in the young republic to be changing and challenging. For one, the vast lands of the Virginia Colony were subdivided into other US states and territories. In 1784, Virginia relinquished its claims to the Illinois County, Virginia, except for the Virginia Military District (Southern Indiana). In 1775, Daniel Boone blazed a trail for the Transylvania Company from Fort Chiswell in Virginia through the Cumberland Gap into central Kentucky. This Wilderness Road became the principal route used by settlers for more than fifty years to reach Kentucky from the East. The fledgling US government rewarded veterans of the Revolutionary War with plots of land along the Ohio River in the Northwest Territory. In 1792, three western counties split off to form Kentucky.