Tag: NoDestination

No Destination: London

I intended to go to Powell County and to Stanton before returning home. But rather then turning in Livingston, I went straight. Oops. I discovered my mistake upon seeing the “Laurel County” sign.

The drive into London on US-25(S) is beautiful as you drive through the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains. I called a friend who now lives in London, hoping to stop in for a visit. As a result of my ill-timed phone call, I missed Camp Wildcat (which was the site of an 1861 Civil War skirmish). But that was OK as the plum tart was well worth it!

I will leave London to Nate and to the Kentucky 120 Project as the town was built around its Courthouses. The county courthouse looks older than it is. Even so, a new courthouse is under construction. There is an old federal courthouse, as well as a new one (pictured). Quite a judicial metropolis for a town of only 6,000 inhabitants.

I hope to visit Laurel County again to visit its non-London areas: the Cumberland Gap, the original KFC and the annual World Chicken Festival (which I missed by only two weeks!).

No Destination: Livingston

Of the three incorporated communities in Rockcastle County – Brodhead, Mt. Vernon and Livingston – Livingston was my favorite. And I don’t know why.

According to the 2000 Census, the population was 228. The old graded school was boarded up and over 1-in-4 persons live below the poverty line. Even so, the man sitting on the steps of the school spoke fondly of what the town once was. He recalled his years at the graded school fondly and how the community had once been vibrant. I discovered the following:

But Livingston has no hotel, no drug store or bank or any of these sundry establishments. There was a time when all these and more were present. Not one, but four hotels and numerous boarding houses catered to temporary residents. Not one, but two doctors tended human frailty. All that remain now are ghosts, faint echoes of a once-prosperous past when Livingston was a busy and exciting place to live. Livingston’s Main Street, at the heart of the town, is a place of padlocked doors and boarded windows, of burned and sagging buildings, of broken glass and rotting timbers and unswept dust.

The last source of pride was the Livingston Graded School, which served the community from 1927 to 1994. It closed in the wake of school consolidation and budget cuts as Kentucky sought to modernize its education system.

There is a memorial park in Livingston with a memorial to the Graded School, saying “Can’t Hide the Pride.” Hopefully, this community will again one day have a source of pride.

Also in this memorial park is a beautiful 9-11 memorial. Standing at about 12 feet tall, it is a complete surprise and worthy of being found in a community/town/city of any size. Because in Livingston, you cannot hide the pride.

No Destination: Mount Vernon

As the county seat of Rockcastle County, I anticipated too much of little Mt. Vernon. In truth, it is certainly not a fault of the people. Walking through downtown, I passed the closed (it was a Sunday) Tea Cup Cafe (pictured in the saloon-looking structure) as the owners were exiting. A short conversation revealed that they are working hard to increase the image of Mt. Vernon. The sidewalks need fixing and other downtown improvements are needed – but the good news is that members of this little community recognize and desire these improvements.

On one end of Main Street is the courthouse and new judicial center – which I will leave for Nate to discuss. It was, at best, disappointing (though none of the citizenry seemed to miss the old courthouse either). The town is named after George Washington’s Virginia home; the county after an observation by a hunting party that a rock in the area resembled a castle.

One destination missed on my sojourn is Rockcastle County’s most famous attraction: Renfro Valley. Located two miles north of Mt. Vernon, Renfro Valley is Kentucky’s Country Music Capital is the home to a popular entertainment center and the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame.

No Destination: Brodhead

Entering into the mountain region is simply breathtaking. Throughout the rest of the days’ drive, the scenery was beautiful.

The Rockcastle County community of Brodhead is the home of the Little World’s Fair. The Fair has been an annual event for over 100 years and is now a weeklong fundraiser for the Brodhead Volunteer Fire Department. A curve in the road, Brodhead is at the headwaters of the Dix River. Originally named Stigalls Station, the town was renamed in the late 1860s when it became a stop on the L&N Railroad.

I tend to do a little ‘Googling’ when posting about my travels, and I was surprised to find the following tidbit from Brodhead’s past: “Aug 10, 1993 – In Brodhead, Ky., a man who sat in a lawn chair guarding his marijuana field with an assault rifle was shot to death by police after a daylong standoff.” [And unlike Nate earlier this week in Campton, I felt perfectly comfortable in Brodhead.]

No Destination: Preachersville

When I saw this little town on the map, I wanted to drive through and see a church called “Preachersville [Blank] Church.” Special thanks to the United Methodists for fulfilling my photographic curiosity.

Preachersville, Kentucky is a quiet farming community in Lincoln County between Lancaster (Garrard) and Crab Orchard (Lincoln). Near the Dix River, it was unsurprisingly named because – there were a lot of preachers who lived in the area. Apparently, the concentration of ministers was more dense in this area then in any other region of the country as Preachersville is the only community in the United States to hold this unique name.

Today, it is the home of two churches. The Drakes Creek Baptist Church (c. 1860, but the building burned and the new church was built in the 1960s) and the Preachersville United Methodist Church. The Methodist Church, pictured above, was established and built in 1891.

This area of Lincoln County is beautiful. The foothills of the Appalachians lie on the horizon and the rolling hills are fertile. I made this trip a couple weeks ago and on that Sunday, the weather was perfect: the grass greener and the skies bluer.

Before leaving Lincoln County, I travelled through another small community: Crab Orchard. Near the end of the Logan Trace of the Wilderness Trail, Crab Orchard was famed for its mineral springs. Apparently, it was not uncommon for 400-500 guests to visit the springs each day through the 1920s. Crab Orchard also had at least one curiosity: the water tower evidences the divide experienced by families in this area during the Civil War. The water tower reads “Crab Orchard: Embracing our Past” with the American and Confederate flags painted on either side.

No Destination: The Roebling Bridge

I had plans to go with a friend to last weekend’s Kentucky-Miami (OH) football game at Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio. To get there, I took the interstate but only as far as the river. We parked in Newport, had a pitcher of beer at the Beer Sellar on the river, and boarded a water taxi which ferried us across and down the river to a spot between the stadium and the baseball ballpark (they do the same thing before Reds’ games).

Aside from enjoying a few minutes on the water, one of the biggest perks was traveling under the Roebling Bridge. Named after its architect, John A. Roebling, the bridge was constructed over a ten-year span and was completed in 1867.

If either the name Roebling or the appearance of the bridge seem familiar to you, they are. After finishing the Cincinnati-Covington bridge, Roebling’s services were utilized in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge which began in 1870 and concluded in 1883. The similarities between the two bridges are clear.

At 1,224 feet, the Roebling Bridge was (at the time of its completion) the world’s longest suspension bridge. This record was surpassed by the Brooklyn Bridge which spanned 1,595 feet.

Also pictured (far left) is the Ascent at Roebling’s Bridge, a 22-story condominium project that was designed by Daniel Libeskind. The structure won world-wide aclaim and was named the best high-rise in America in 2008 by CNBC. I first noticed the Ascent from the Reds’ ballpark during a July 2008 game and it is certainly a beautiful building.

Oh, and Kentucky won the game, 42-0. Go Cats!

No Destination: Winchester

After leaving the Howard’s Creek area in southern Clark County, I traveled north on Boone Avenue (KY 627). After his courthouse visit, Nate had told me about the great oddity of Winchester: College Street.

Look far and wide, but there is no remaining college on College Street or elsewhere in Winchester. But, from 1890 to 1954, Winchester was the home of Kentucky Wesleyan College; it has since relocated to Owensboro. Among its most notable alumna, Supreme Court Chief Justice Stanley Reed (1902).

The old college grounds are now a city park and some of the campus buildings remain. The Carnegie Library (c. 1914) is now a community center (a child’s birthday party was going on during my campus visit) and the Spencer Memorial Gymnasium is currently being expanded and converted into the city natatorium.

Downtown Winchester has many small, locally owned and operated businesses. The historic buildings are mostly well-kept, in repair and freshly painted. The downtown area is dominated by, as Nate put it, a “massive” whitewashed courthouse.

Leaving Winchester, I drove past the Ale-8-One bottling plant. Ale-8-One is a Kentucky soft drink that is most like a ginger ale, but that would still be an inaccurate description. Introduced in 1926, the soda has a limited distribution area but it is “the drink” in Winchester. I saw countless young teenagers milling around drinking from the iconic glass green bottle.

A final note: Helen Thomas, journalist and White House correspondent for every President since John F. Kennedy was born in Winchester. Regrettably, there is no historical marker related to Ms. Thomas in Winchester.

No Destination: Howard’s Creek (Providence) Church

I continued without destination by heading east from Athens. I have found that a No Destination trek is made more comfortable with the GPS feature on the iPhone as I could take a few extra turns with the knowledge that I was merely on a detour and not going down a dead-end.

I found Grimes Mill Road – just inside Clark County – to be breathtaking. The beautiful stone home, the red barns and the bridge over the stream all captured eras past. Minutes later, I find myself peering in the windows of a cafe & bakery at Combs Ferry. It was closed, but not out of business as large sacks of organic sidamo coffee beans lay on the floor.

Uncertain as to whether my destination for the day would be McKee, Winchester or Paris, I saw a historic marker and followed the path down which it led. The church at Howard’s Creek was regularly attended by Daniel Boone. In 1790, the church was renamed “Providence” and the present stone structure was contructed by William Bush, who was a member of Boone’s second Kentucky expedition. According to the historic marker, the church “passed to Negro Baptists, 1870.”

After a heavy rain, the road to the church would be under water at two points. It was a beautiful, short drive to the church and the old, stone building was picturesque. As I walked up to the church on a Saturday, I noticed the freshly mowed grass. As I snapped a few pictures, the minister came out and we exchanged greetings.

He had been preparing the Sunday sermon for his flock at the Providence Missionary Baptist Church. About 14 attend weekly, and the church remains a black baptist congregation. It also remains as the oldest Baptist church west of the Alleghenies.

No Destination: Athens

Leaving my home in Nicholasville, I traveled through eastern Jessamine County and southern Fayette County before arriving in the small community of Athens (pronounced with a long “A”, AY-thÉ™nz). Located in rural Fayette County (but part of Lexington-Fayette due to the 1974 merger of city and county), Athens was first settled in 1786 and was chartered in 1826.

Originally known as “Cross Plains,” it has been suggested that the name “Athens” is a reference to Lexington’s old nickname, “The Athens of the West.” The nickname was a statement of Lexington’s educational and societal strength during the early- to mid-1800s.

The village was a manufacturing center until most of the town had burned by 1860 (according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which listed the Athens historic district in 1979, a major fire occurred in 1853-54). Today, Athens is nothing more than a crossroads. The old Athens Elementary School was closed a few years ago and is now used as an antique mall.

What remains of the historic district sits at the crossroads: the Aubrey Inn (c. 1800) and the Marshall Tavern (c. 1840). These two brick structures have been well-cared for and are surprisingly imposing for this little hamlet; clear evidence of what once was.

No Destination: Liberty

This sleepy town of about 2,000 is – and always has been – all about its name: Liberty. A number of Revolutionary War veterans received land grants in the area and named their community after that which they had sacrificed. Liberty was selected as the county seat in 1808 and was finally incorporated in 1830.

Looking down Main Street from the courthouse, I noticed a small park (Veteran’s Park) with many waving American flags. In that park, too, was an exact replica of the Liberty Bell (sans the infamous crack). The original bell, which hung in Independence Hall arrived in America from its manufacturer (the Whitechapel Bell Foundry) in 1753. The Liberty replica was also cast by Whitechapel and, with its African teak headstock, weighs 2,700 pounds. It is dedicated to the “Citizens of Liberty” (a great double entendre).