Kentucky River

“ Its territory was supposed, in the early days, to extend to low water mark on the eastern side of the Big Sandy River, to the northern bank of the Ohio River, and to the western bank of the Mississippi on the western border, while the Kentucky, Barren and Green rivers lie wholly within its borders, and the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers cross the State in the western section. Green River is said to be one of the deepest river waterways in the world, and the scenery along its banks is indeed picturesque. ”

“ A tall, muscular young fellow, dressed in hunter garb, came silently out of the woods from the north side of the Kentucky river, about a hundred years ago, and pausing by the bole of a gigantic beech tree, scanned the opposite shore with keen, silent attention. ”

“ Beginnings of Settlements The party passed the present site of Richmond in Madison County, and reached a point on the Kentucky River, in 1775, where Boonesborough was built. The site selected was a broad, level stretch of land, with the river to the north, and high hills to the south. This particular spot was selected because of a fine spring of water, and high hills that could be used for sentinel towers, inclosing fine level ground for cultivation. The settlers cut trees and constructed a stockade in the form of a hollow square. ”

“ There are rich and beautiful prairies on the river, and its valley is wide and fertile. A canal passes along this valley, and extends north-easterly to Lake Erie. The Licking and Kentucky rivers take their rise in the Cumberland Mountains, and flow north-westerly into the Ohio. They are each about two hundred miles in length. The latter is navigable for one hundred and fifty miles, and has a width of one hundred and fifty yards at its mouth. The current is rapid, and the shores are high. For a great part of its course, it flows between perpendicular banks of limestone. ”

“ At the foot of this mountain they fell into an Indian path leading from the Cherokee towns on Tennessee River to the Shawnee Indian towns on the Ohio, which path they followed down Yellow Creek to the old ford of Cumberland River.... Thence they went on the path down the river to the Flat Lick, eight miles; here they left the river, continued on the path, turning more north, crossing some of the head branches of the Kentucky River over a poor and hilly country, until they concluded there was no good country in the West. ”

“ From the north-west many roads are projected to pierce the great deposits of coking and cannel coals, and find or bore a way through the mountain ridges into south-western Virginia. One of these, the Kentucky Union, starting from Lexington (which is becoming a great railroad centre) , has reached Clay City, and will soon be open to the Three Forks of the Kentucky River, and on to Jackson, in Breathitt County. ”

“ All around Lake Erie and the Niagara River, both in Canada and the State of New York, the fair face of Nature is just blooming; all the woods are dressed in their mantle of green, the countless birds sing among the branches, and all things hereabout clearly shows that the self-same God that has adorned the State of Kentucky has done as much in these parts. ”

“ The border annals of the West abound with incidents as romantic as any which have been applauded by men. Daniel Boone is not the only hero of the frontier; he is not even the chief hero,—he is but a type, whom an accident of literature has made conspicuous.
The Kentucky River (541 miles) enters at Carrollton, Ky.,—a well-to-do town, with busy-looking wharves upon both streams,—through a wide and rather uninteresting bottom. ”

“ Moreover in fighting off the Indians from their own cabins and cornfields they had protected the frontiers of Virginia and others of the older states, so that Kentucky was a kind of advance guard beyond the mountains, and led the way for Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, and other great states in the West and South.
Down in the heart of Kentucky, by the Ohio river, is a land long known as the Kentucky Blue Grass region. The “blue grass,” as it is called, grows luxuriantly here, as do grain and tobacco, for the soils, made by the wasting of limestone, are rich and fertile. ”

“ Kentucky Oaks
are salty and so are the wells. Salt River was nearly dry. Much of my way this forenoon was over naked limestone. After passing the level ground that extended twenty-five or thirty miles from the river I came to a region of rolling hills called Kentucky Knobs—hills of denudation, covered with trees to the top. Some of them have a few pines. For a few hours I followed the farmers’ paths, but soon wandered away from roads and encountered many a tribe of twisted vines difficult to pass. ”

“ This mountain pass, lying in the heart of this reserved wilderness of timbers, coals, and ores, has always had its slender thread of local history. It was from a time immemorial a buffalo and Indian trail, leading to the head-waters of the Cumberland and Kentucky rivers; during the Civil War it played its part in certain local military exploits and personal adventures of a quixotian flavor; and of old the rich farmers of Lee County used to drive their cattle through it to fatten on the pea-vine and blue-grass growing thick on the neighboring mountain tops. ”

“ Christopher Carson, known among his friends as simply Kit Carson, was a Kentuckian by birth, having been born in December, 1809. Kentucky was at the time of his birth an almost pathless wilderness, rich with game, and along its river banks the grasses grew so luxuriant that it invited settlers to settle there and build homes out of the trees which grew in such profusion. Small gardens were cultivated where corn, beans, onions and a few other vegetables were raised, but families subsisted, for the most part, on game with which the forests abound, and the lakes and rivers were alive with fish. ”

“ Men were employed as ‘road cutters,’ as ‘surveyors,’ to ‘carry provisions,’ to ‘grind corn,’ and ‘collect [Pg 203] bacon.’ The pay was two shillings sixpence per day, and the work extended over twenty-two days in the summer of 1792.” [28]
The Kentucky legislature passed an act in 1793, which provided a guard for pilgrims on the Wilderness Road; in 1794 an act was passed for the clearing of the Boonesborough fork of the road, from Rockcastle Creek to the Kentucky River. ”

“ The house was situated very near the boat-landing on the wharf of the Miami River—too near for comfort when freshets swept down in that direction, but a pleasant outlook across on to the Kentucky hills; the river sometimes so low that your father has walked across and gathered flowers in Kentucky, then again rising so as to sweep everything before it as it did two years ago, utterly obliterating all that portion of Lawrenceburg where we lived. ”

“ This territory was a neutral hunting-ground for Northern and Southern Indians. The red men hunted over it, but did not live permanently upon it or claim it as their own. The district, therefore, was easier for the white man to settle than [7] were the surrounding regions in which the Indians had permanent homes.
The settlement of the Kentucky region really began several years before the Revolution. In 1769 Daniel Boone, a great hunter and one of the most interesting of American pioneers, left his home on the Yadkin River, in North Carolina, to seek the wilderness of Kentucky. ”

“ So would Kentucky, and the enlargement of the Louisville canal would be within her own limits. When we reflect that Kentucky borders for nearly a thousand miles on the Ohio and Mississippi, with her streams, the Big Sandy, Licking, Kentucky, Green river, and Barren (which last four have 766 miles of slackwater navigation) , Cumberland, and Tennessee, all tributaries of the Ohio, the benefits to her would be prodigious. ”

“ Owing to the peculiar form of the shore on the Kentucky side, the land bending far out into the water, the ice had been lodged and detained in great quantities, and the narrow channel which swept round the bend was full of ice, piled one cake over another, thus forming a temporary barrier to the descending ice, which lodged, and formed a great undulating raft, filling up the whole river, and extending almost to the Kentucky shore. ”

“ All the inconvenience which would result from attaching a narrow strip of country lying on the northwest side of that noble river to the States on its southeastern side, would result from attaching to Kentucky, the State on its southeastern border, a body of land lying northwest of the real river, and divided from the main land only by a narrow channel, through the whole of which the waters of the river do not pass, until they rise ten feet above the low water mark. ”

“ If we search the annals of both ancient and modern times we can find no record that shows greater fidelity from slave to master than was exhibited by a negro to one of Kentucky's most noted pioneers.
In 1782, March 19, people living in the vicinity of Boonesborough discovered some empty rafts floating down the river. They at once knew that Indians had used them to cross the stream so as to attack the unprotected settlements. News was sent to the various stations warning the settlers. Colonel Logan dispatched fifteen men to Estill's Station, where they were joined by twenty-five from that fort. ”

“ These first comers found their way to Kentucky by two routes—the Warriors' Path through Cumberland Gap, and the Ohio River, which they reached either by the Kittanning Path up the Juniata or by Braddock's or Forbes's Roads. Each route was dangerous and difficult beyond description. It was a terrible road from Cumberland to Pittsburg, and the journey down the Ohio was not more inviting. When the river was high and afforded safe navigation it was as much a highway for red men as for white—and these were treacherous times. ”

“ The farm-houses are in better style, the market gardens larger, prosperity more evident. Among the pleasing sights are frequent farmsteads at the summits of the slopes, with orchards and vineyards, and gardens and fields, stretching down almost to the river—quite, indeed, on the Ohio side, but in Kentucky flanked at the base by the railway [pg 176] terrace. Numerous ferries connect the Kentucky railway stations with the eastern bank; one, which we saw just above New Richmond, O. (446 miles) , was run by horse power, a weary nag in a tread-mill above each side-paddle. ”

“ The most unfavorable mountain conditions are fairly illustrated by eastern Kentucky, a veritable back country. Along the roads the traveler passes a number of [Pg 34] one-room houses, without glass windows, and is told many tales of the irregular or no-family life of the people. Perhaps along a creek he chances on a traditional Mountain White family, such as Porte Crayon drew fifty years ago, when these people were first described as a curiosity. Below a dirty and ill-favored house, down under the bank on the shingle near the river, sits a family of five people, all ill-clothed and unclean ”

“ Vessels traveling the river usually follow a sailing line charted by the United States Army Corps of Engineers which, for most of the stretch in question, is either close to the center of the river or near the Kentucky shore. Illinois does not dispute that the sailing line, like most of the river, is within the boundary and jurisdiction of Kentucky. ”

“ Those nations have absolutely been kept off your back settlements by the inhabitants of Kentucky. Two or three thousand men in this country would be sufficient to defend it, and effectually secure the back settlements on New River & its waters, as well as those high up James River & Roanoake. ”

“ The Cumberland river rising, in the mountains of Southeastern Kentucky, flows nearly due East and West and upon the same parallel of latitude on which Bowlinggreen is situated, until within sixty or seventy miles of that place, when it inclines to the Southwest. The Green river affords a line extending eastward, and defensible, beyond the point where the Cumberland begins to bend to the Southwest. At this point the two rivers are about thirty miles apart. The country throughout this section of the State is broken but accessible to the march of large bodies of troops. ”

“ Indeed, the concurrent testimony of all the persons engaged in the navigation of the river is, that they could never safely go east of the island, unless in high water, and that they uniformly took the west channel in dry seasons; and the flatboatmen, in early times, even in high water, were frequently compelled to uncouple their boats in order to descend the Kentucky channel, and then were obliged to pull through by trees, on account of the narrowness of the channel. In low water they would quite often get aground and have to wait for a rise of the river to take them out. ”

“ In 1767, John Finley and Daniel Boone, hearing of the fine hunting in this section, came to Kentucky from North Carolina and built a cabin on Red River, near where Estill, Powell, and Clark counties are now joined. Two years later, about forty hunters and adventurers came to the territory and made their [pg 5] camp at what they then called Price’s Meadows, about six miles from the present site of Monticello in Wayne County. ”

“ One of the paintings that attracted most attention in the Kentucky building at the St. Louis World's Fair was the artistic reproduction of this picturesque place by Mrs. Georgia McGrew Edwards.
In Lyon County, near Eddyville, 1848, several men explored a cavern for half a mile, where a large stream of water, an underground river, was found to be flowing.
About three miles from Benton, in Marshall County, on a high hill, there is a lake about sixty yards in diameter, whose depth is unknown; its waters neither rise nor fall, but stand about fifty feet above the bed of the creek below. ”