Tag: Jessamine

NoD: Bridges of Camp Nelson

Camp Nelson
Camp Nelson Bridge, Jessamine/Garrard county line, Ky.

Pictured above are the three bridges, or at least what remains of them, which crossed the Kentucky River from Jessamine into Garrard County. In the upper-left you can see the current Camp Nelson Bridge which carries US-27 high above the river. In the middle remains the southern stone approach from the double-barreled covered bridge that spanned the site for nearly 100 years (1838-1933). The steel-truss structure from which this picture was taken remains, but is closed to traffic; it was open from 1933 until 1971.

More on each of these three bridges to come…

Merry (White) Christmas!!

Christmas 2010
Snowy Jessamine County, Ky.

Christ Church Cathedral
Christ Church Cathedral
Lexington, Ky.

Merry Christmas, Kaintuckeeans!!

The snow is falling on this beautiful day – and the ground has a fresh cover of snow. Amazingly, today is only Lexington’s 13th white Christmas since 1872. [*]

Last night, the trip to and from Christ Church Cathedral was full of snow and the candlelight Eucharist service was full of beauty and wonder. Our family celebrates the Christmas season Scandinavian style (I am 25% Swede, 25% Norse). I’ve posted a lot of pictures of our julbord (a Christmas smorgasbord) on my flickr account.

However you celebrate this day, Merry Christmas to you and yours!!

NoD: Nicholasville Streetscape Project

Election 2010
Main Street, Nicholasville, Ky.

Lexingtonians can sympathize with what is currently going on with Nicholasville’s Main Street. Lexington’s months of burying utility lines, sidewalk adjustments have ended and moved south to Nicholasville. (Though Nicholasville’s beautification project is not [at least partly] prompted by a settlement with the EPA.)

Nicholasville’s improvements will come in three phases and will utimately include three new parks in the downtown area. Nicholasville Now has a lot of information about the project on their website. I’ll post more when Phase I is complete, but until then watch out for traffic cones!

No Destination: Union Mill

Abandoned Bridge, Union Mill (Jessamine Co.), Ky.

The Jessamine County community of Union Mill (on KY-169) once was home to a successful distillery operation, one of several that used to operate in the county. The beautiful Hickman Creek (pictured below at right) provided the necessary moving water for both the distillery and the gristmill.

The first gristmill was constructed and operated by Joseph Crockett, a Revolutionary War veteran, around 1800. By the middle of the 1800s, the distillery was operating and bottling “Old Lexington Club Whiskey.” The mills produced “Hickman Lily” and “Snow on the Mountain” flour. But Prohibition shuttered the distillery, and the mill and community followed. [cite, PDF]

An old 150-foot covered bridge once traversed the creek. According to some reports the covered bridge was replaced in 1915 (see comments to this post), while other reports indicate it was lost in to flood waters in 1932. Still visible below the abandoned four-span, steel bedstead and pony truss bridge that followed is the original stonework from the covered bridge. [Kentucky’s Covered Bridges (KY) (Images of America)]. All of this was abandoned when, in 1955, KY-169 was rerouted slightly to the west.

UPDATE: Immediately below is a picture sent to me by the author of Kentucky’s Covered Bridges, Walter Laughlin, which shows the old covered bridge in its heyday.

Union Mills Covered Bridge
Photo Courtesy of Walter Laughlin



ANOTHER UPDATE: I’ve seen it before, but never added it. From the old Sanborn insurance maps comes this gem, circa. 1903. It identifies the pictured covered bridge and the different buildings related to the distillery. The distillery was in operation daily, five months out of the year. Yield was 20 barrels. See photo below:

Sanborn Insurance Map, ca. 1903 of Union Mill (Source)

Additionally, check out my post from December 2010 wherein I reported on the ultimate demise of the steel pony-truss bridge.

No Destination: Boone Tunnel & Brooklyn Bridge

Travelling south/west on US-68 through Jessamine County is a beautiful, winding drive. When you reach the Kentucky River, you find a ‘modern’ bridge and cross the river. But if you carefully look to your left before reaching the bridge, you will see an old tunnel carved out of the Kentucky Palisades. The tunnel, Boone Tunnel, was the first tunnel in Kentucky constructed for highway traffic.

The tunnel provided access to a 250-foot iron-truss bridge that spanned the Kentucky River from 1871 until 1955. In that year, the bridge collapsed under the weight of a delivery truck and the deliveryman was badly injured. A judge awarded him $50,000, but the governor reduced the damages to $10,000 with the statement that “no man was worth $50,000.”

See also: Jessamine County’s Kentucky River Guidebook.

No Destination: Valley View Ferry

Fjording the Kentucky River at the point where Fayette, Jessamine and Madison counties meet is the John Craig. This boat has provided a motor for the Valley View Ferry since 1996, but the ferry is much older. In fact, the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1785 issued John Craig (a Revolutionary War veteran) the “perpetual and irrevocable” charter to operate the ferry at the site.

Since that time, a ferry has operated at Valley View and it is the longest, continuously operating business in the Commonwealth. For more than 200 years, the franchise for the privately-owned ferry was transferred between seven families. In 1991, it was purchased for $60,000 by the three counties who have since operated the ferry toll-free.

The barge adjoining the John Craig was replaced in 2000 and can now ferry three vehicles across the river at once (before the upgrade, only two could cross at the same time). About 250 vehicles cross the Kentucky River each day aboard the Valley View Ferry.

Flying above the John Craig are four flags: the American flag, the Kentucky flag, the Virginia flag and the POW-MIA flag. The Virginia flag flies as a tribute to the colony which first provided Cpt. Craig his franchise.

I always find it fun to ride the ferry, though my wife has a clear preference against it. Though, I guess the same could be said about all of my No Destinations.

NoDestination: Spears


Spears, Kentucky is one of those county-straddlers. Because the center of Tates Creek Road was used as the boundary between Jessamine and Fayette counties upon the creation of the former, this community on Tates Creek Road (KY-1974 at the junction with KY-169) is also in both counties. It was settled in the early 1790s by John L. Spears; other settlors followed as Spears was a well-educated man known for being both a surveyor and a teacher. (Today, Spears is serviced by two county school systems – depending on which side of the street you are on.) Spears even had its own post office from 1867 until 1915.

Pictured above is the Fayette County Old Country Store; across the street is another market in Jessamine County.

Jessamine County Courthouse – Nicholasville, Ky.

Ah, Nickytown. . . home of my good friend Peter, who serves as the primary writer for this blog. I promised him that I would wait to do Nicholasville with him, so we headed into town one evening last week. The Jessamine County Courthouse is beautiful, and is quite a complex building.
Here at the right you can see the back of the building, which shows a lot of its complexity. I particularly like the lady justice that faces (I believe) west on the side of the courthouse. The folks in the courthouse were extremely friendly, offering to let us see the Circuit Courtroom and show us around. The courthouse was originally built in 1878, and was remodeled in 1964.
I thought this little tidbit was pretty interesting. According to the county historical marker, Jessamine county was named for the Jessamine flower that grows so abundantly in the area, as well as the Jessamine Creek. Local legend apparently attributes that name to Jessamine Douglass, the daughter of an early settler to the area, who was allegedly “stealthily tomahawked” to death by a Native American as she rested on the creek. That seems to me to be a strange way to name a creek/county, but hey, who am I?

No Destination: Nicholasville

I traveled with Nate on a Courthouse tour and walked around four communities. Often, I would get out of the car a few blocks away from the courthouse and explore the little towns for about 20 minutes. Also, No Destinations will begin to examine the landmarks found rather than only the day’s journey. This should allow me to delve into each discovery a little more.

Nicholasville was named after Col. George Nicholas, a veteran of the Revolutionary War who authored Kentucky’s first Constitution. The city was laid out in 1798 – the same year in which Jessamine was carved from Fayette County. A number of historic churches are within a block of the courthouse, but it is the courthouse that dominates this little ville.

Being a resident of little Nicholasville – one of Lexington’s bedroom communities – is both a blessing and a curse. Despite its pitfalls, however, Nicholasville’s central business district is improving and has several great little jewels. One of those jewels is Main & Maple, a small coffee house and cafe that is housed in a renovated pharmacy. I pictured a corner of Main & Maple above along with the school bus. Despite its storied past (look for a future post on the Chaumiere des Praries), I feel that this picture captures the pace and attitude of Jessamine, i.e., a working class bedroom community with schools and a few other things too.