Today we had no intention of getting much of anywhere, well, at first we did. At first we intended to make the Buffalo Trace distillery somewhere up around Lexington. But as the morning wore on and we drove further and further in the opposite direction we needed to go to reach Lexington, we revised our itinerary on the fly.
Today was the day we wanted to visit a couple of the earliest settlements in Kentucky. And when I say early I'm talking Daniel Boone early. The first town we wanted to visit was at first called Logan's Station, then became St. Asaph, and finally, when the settlement became a tad more refined, it took on the name of Stanford.
Logan's Station, a sort of fort but without being totally enclosed by walls, was founded by a chap named Benjamin Logan. It was established way back in 1774. Back then the only humans who had any legitimate claim to the Kentucky wilderness were a handful of native American tribes who lived across the Ohio in what would become the states of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. All the tribes considered Kentucky their very private hunting ground, and anyone caught trespassing there often discovered much too late that Kentucky was a very dangerous place to take up farming or any other pursuit in those days.
That's why Benjamin Logan and other intrepid frontiersmen, willing to brave the Kentucky wilderness in the 18th century, would most often establish a central fortress that would be manned by men from the surrounding farms in time of trouble. When things were quiet, the settlers would clear the distant land of trees, plant crops, and begin to establish a new life for themselves.
But when news reached the fort of the approach of a war party, runners would be dispatched to warn the outlying farms that everyone needed to come to the fort. Sometimes news of a war party wasn't received until they were seen crossing the Ohio. And sometimes settlers didn't hear about their approach until an outlying farm was attacked, the farm buildings burned, and the unfortunate farmers murdered or carried off into captivity.
I began studying Logan's Station in an effort to learn more about the presence of my mother's father's ancestors who came to Kentucky, probably shortly before or shortly after the American Revolution. Their family name was Jones and, unfortunately for me, that family name turns up in Kentucky in a number of different geographic locations around the same time. My 3-times great grandfather may have been at Logan's Station, and he may not have. There is a John Jones listed as being part of Logan's band of militiamen, but I have no idea if he belongs to me. The reason is that at the same time there are also Jones family members living near Louisville on the Ohio River, and more near Lexington.
Not wanting to pass up any opportunity to see where my ancestors MIGHT have lived, we made Logan's Station our first destination of the day. Picking out this particular destination allowed us to spend a very pleasant morning cruising the Martha Layne Collins, Blue Grass Parkway, which was a beautiful and lightly-traveled divided highway from Elizabethtown to the outskirts of Lexington. We got off at the intersection of the Parkway and Route 127 and drove south toward Logan's Station, now called Stanford.
It took us until almost noon to reach Stanford. We stopped on the outskirts of town to photograph the historic marker for the old Fort, then we cruised down the hill and into the historic section that looked pretty old, but not much like a frontier station. We didn't see any mention of the historic fort on main street, if one still existed at all. So we found a nice place to park next to a cinder-block warehouse on Main Street that looked like it hadn't been open in a few years, and turned off the engine. It was time for a bit of lunch.
While Concetta was doing the lunch prep, I did a little sleuthing and discovered that the old Station had once stood just a block west of the courthouse. I remembered passing the court house and there was now a row of buildings to the west of the ancient brick structure. At that point I resigned myself to not being able to stand on the actual ground where my ancestors might have stood. I put the computer away, we had our lunch, and I reconciled myself to moving on to the next point of interest on our list.
But there was one more thing left to do before leaving town. We had to fill the gas tank. I never actually allow the gas tank to get empty. When the level drops to half full, I begin to scout for a handy filling station. Since we were on the half mark I wheeled into the first station I came across and squeezed into a tiny establishment right on main street in the middle of town.
The first thing that happened was a young chap of about 25 ran out and began helping me with the gas pump. This sudden maneuver sort of caught me by surprise, and I must admit I was a tad short with the fellow. But when I realized he was just trying to help me, I smoothed things over with him, found out his name was Gary, and we began to chat about this, that, and the other thing. At some point I got around to asking him if there was anything left of Logan's old fort or station.
"Sure," Gary said brightly. "It's just out of town a bit."
I immediately perked up and said, "like right near here?"
"Absolutely!" Gary turned and looked up the street the way we'd been heading. "You just go up main street here, then take a left on Martin Luther King street. It's not far at all."
Incredibly, we had seen Martin Luther King Street earlier when we'd stopped to photograph the Logan's Station historic marker. "That's great," I said. "I know right where that is."
So, once the tank was filled and I'd said goodbye to Gary, we rolled on down Main Street, turned left on MLK Street, and before long were bumping and bouncing down a much neglected road on the outskirts of Stanford. Soon the pavement ended and we came abreast of an old garage that had a sign posted proclaiming itself the "Logan's Fort Visitor Center." Trying to avoid the deepest of the mud holes and ruts around the center, I parked and was halfway out of my seat when Concetta pointed out that the building sure looked deserted to her. "And," she went on, "it has a giant padlock on the front door."
I stopped exiting the truck at that point and focused my attention on an orange-shirted fellow running a riding mower nearby. He was swiftly and skillfully cropping all the grass on the south side of the muddy track where we sat. Deciding on a new mission, I jumped down and headed for the mower guy. "Why don't you talk to the guy in the pickup truck?" Concetta called after me.
That was the first time I'd noticed that there was an actual person in the cab of the nearby Ford Ranger pickup. He appeared to be asleep and had slumped so far down in the cab that only the top third of his head showed above the side window. I really didn't want to disturb his nap, but I was sort of desperate to find out if the steep, rutted road just beyond the pickup was going to accommodate our thirty-one foot rig.
When I reached the pickup window the driver still hadn't stirred, so I did the old throat-clearing routine and he opened one eye, saw me, and pushed himself vertical in the seat. "Howdy," I said. "I was just wondering if this is the road to Logan's Fort."
The guy nodded, smiled, and said "Yes it is. You just go up that road another quarter mile and you're there."
Relieved to see he wasn't angry with me for interrupting his nap, I said, "Do you think I can get that RV up there?"
He smiled some more. "Sure! Do you want me to lead you up there in the pickup?"
"That would be great," I said, not exactly certain how that would help me. I think he just wanted something to do since watching the other guy mow the lawn must have been way boring."
And so the young man drove ahead of us up the rocky, rutted road and I tried as expertly as I could to avoid the worst of the ruts and the mud holes. Before long we'd arrived at a structure that resembled a movie set fort in a lot of ways since it was only the front wall and two block houses. We all got out and the young man explained that in just another week local re-enactors would be using the mock-up fort for some staged frontier battles in celebration of the town's early history. But we could go ahead and have the place to ourselves, even go into the block houses if we wanted.
After that the guy was off to supervise the mower guy (who turned out to be an inmate) and we spent a few moments walking around the structure taking photos. It was a little disappointing that the town of Stanford seemed to have put a minimum of effort into their fort, but perhaps someday they'll complete things.
After our Logan's Fort visit, we jumped back on Route 270 and headed back the way we had come earlier in the day. Our next stop was the old Fort at Harrodsburg, what we would later learn from docents was considered to be the very first settlement in Kentucky. From the wiki we learn that: "Harrodstown (sometimes Harrod's Town) was laid out and founded by its namesake James Harrod on June 16, 1774. The settlement was abandoned later the same year as a result of Native American attacks, but it was resettled a year later in 1775. Fear of attacks from the Native Americans during the American Revolutionary War left it one of only three settlements in Kentucky after 1777, along with Logan's Fort and Boonesborough. Also known as Oldtown, Harrodstown was the first seat of Virginia's Kentucky (1776), Lincoln (1780), and Mercer (1785) counties upon their formations. It remains the seat of Mercer County in Kentucky."
If Concetta and I were disappointed with the effort made to reconstruct Logan's Fort, we were just totally in awe of the effort put forth in the reconstruction of Harrodsburg. There, a somewhat smaller version of the original fort has been modeled in its entirety. The palisades, the block houses, the interior cabins, all have been expertly done using original plans and descriptions of the fort. Here we very much enjoyed talking with the trio of re-enacters, a blacksmith, a candle-maker, and a soap maker. All had stories to tell, and all were completely fluent in their various crafts, as well as the lives of our ancestors in the 18th century. Time after time Concetta and I think we're pretty versed in history, and time after time the docents surprise us with new and valuable information.
Harrodsburg was well worth the stop and ate up the balance of our day. After that we asked the internet to show us a nearby camp suitable for RVs, and we soon landed here at Lake Herrington. Renting a space at the Chimney Rock RV Campground turned out to be a little on the pricey side, but the camp is one of the few that we would consider in A#1 condition. Everything is neat and orderly, the utilities are all present in blacktopped and graveled spaces, and the laundryroom was better than average.
So that's it for today. We simply had a great time today. We didn't get very far, but tomorrow is another day. Concetta wondered out loud today if I thought we'd actually get to the state of Maine before it was time to make for home. I don't know, I told her. We've twice before set out for Maine and didn't even get close. Only time will tell. If you want to know if we get there finally, you'll have to stay tuned. Until then, we wish you Happy Travels.
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