The Bluegrass State - part 2

Kentucky

(Sightseeing)

November 28, 2017 - December 6, 2017

From Lexington we went west to Frankfort, the capital of Kentucky where we found a wonderful campsite right on Elkhorn Creek, just east of town.

The view from our campsite!

There is a group of 5 or 6 otters who frequent this area. 
We saw them two times swimming around and resting on the far bank.

We first visited the Frankfort Cemetery which was marked as a GEM in the AAA tour book.  As genealogists, we always find cemeteries interesting.   It sits on a high ridge overlooking the city below.

The cemetery overlooks the Kentucky river and...

...the city of Frankfort.

It's a very hilly and very old cemetry, most noted as the burial place of Daniel Boone. Daniel Boone's grave is one of the most prominent in the cemetery - certainly a fitting tribute to such a famous person.

A trip to the Center for Kentucky History yielded Kentucky history from prehistoric times up to the present.  I believe we were absolutely the only ones in the entire museum that day.  The exhibits are well done and we found there to be a lot of interesting history from the time in 1775 when Daniel Boone blazed a road through the Cumberland Gap, allowing settlers to move west past the Appalachian mountains. Within 25 years over 200,000 people had migrated from the east to what would become Kentucky and Tennessee.

One of the more interesting exhibits was on the Kentucky feuds, perhaps the most famous being between the the McCoy and Hatfield families.

The Counties of SE Kentucky.

The fact that most of us have probably heard of some of these feuds is
evidence that the second paragraph above is rings true, especially in the early to mid 1900's.

While at the Center for Kentucky History we were offered a tour of the old State Capital Building about two blocks down the street.  We were the only two on the tour which was really nice.  This building, built in 1830 was the 3rd Capital Building, the others lost to fire I believe.  When they outgrew this building the built a new capital building in 1910 at the other end of town.

All the windows are on the sides of the building leaving the front looking kind of bleak in my opinion.

The beautiful rotunda with it's windowed cupola.
You can also see the top of it's self supporting marble staircase!

View of the stairway from the top.

Here's a better view of the double circular marble staircase from below.  It totally fascinated me.

Here you can see the joints at each step which support the entire staircase.
While I understand the principle behind the construction I still find it hard to believe it actually works.
According the the tour guide, it was designed and built by a man with no previous experience in this sort of construction!  Amazing don't you think?

The building has the typical senate and house chambers along with a cloak room where members could meet and talk, dry their clothes or use the chamber pot in an emergency.

The current State Capital Building turned out to be closed the day we visited despite information to the contrary.  Oh well!  We would have loved to see inside this beautiful building but we were fortunate that we had a sunny day to take some pictures.

The Kentucky State Capital Building in Frankfort, KY.

The Kentucky State Governors Mansion.

Although we rarely drink hard liquor we thought we should at least visit one of the Kentucky Bourbon distilleries while we were in the state.  Buffalo Trace Distillery is headquartered in Frankfort and they offer tours of their facility.  We happened to read they were lighting their Christmas lights on a certain date so we timed our visit and tour to coincide with the lighting festivities.  The tour, followed by a tasting took about an hour.

A bronze statue of their mascot.

The entire property is filled with these brick buildings full of aging bourbon in oak barrels. 
The longer they age the less bourbon remains in the barrel, thus increasing the price you pay per bottle. 
According to our tour guide, what makes Kentucky bourbon so good is the tremendous amount of limestone in the area. 

This is one of the bottling buildings.  In this building, single barrel bourbon is hand bottled.

The single barrel is emptied into this mixer.

The pre-washed bottles are readied.

The filled bottles are labeled.

The bottles are now put into sacks, a special label added, then placed in a cardboard box.

Some of the award winning bourbon made at Buffalo Trace.
They use 3 different mashes to make something like 30 distinct products.

The Christmas lighting was complete with...

...Christmas Carols...

...Santa Claus...

 ...the lighting itself...

... and Christmas lights all around the facility.

It all made for a fun afternoon.

From Frankfort we headed slightly south to Harrodsburg, Kentucky.  We stayed in Danville at the Pioneer Playhouse Campground.  The campground itself is nothing to shout about but walking around the closed (for the season) playhouse was interesting.  It's an open air venue which appears to  begin with dinner.  After that the play begins.  We didn't get any pictures unfortunately but it looked like it would be quite fun.  Reading some of the material around the venue we saw that people like Lee Majors, John Travolta and some other actors we were familiar with but have now forgotten!

We took the car and went back to Harrodsburg to Old Fort Harrod.  Begun in 1774 it was the first permanent English settlement west of the Alleghenies.  Near the fort is the oldest cemetery west of the Alleghenies.

The old pioneer cemetery next to Old Fort Harrod.

Although the fort is a replica it certainly looks like it could be the original thing.

The fort is built on a hill with a palisade surrounding all the buildings.  The buildings themselves back up to the palisade.
Here you see an example of three types of gardens on the right: the kitchen garden, the herb garden and the medicinal garden.  On the left is the yard where their stock (sheep, goats, pigs, etc.) are contained.

This gives you a good sense of the hill upon which the fort is built. 
Just to the left of the picture is a natural spring where they got their water.

This is the main floor of a sort of inn where people could get a meal and a bed.
They had it fixed up for Christmas which we found to be a nice touch.

The blacksmith's "shop".  Note the large bellows to the right of the small building.

An old loom, still used to produce items sold in the gift store.

Dyed yarn and backet making supplies.

Gourds and dried herbs.

An example of fireplace construction.

The school house.  Note the dirt floors.  They were so rough and strewn with rocks it was difficult to walk in this building.

We took lots of pictures of the fort and it's many buildings.  They have lots of artifacts in each building and around the site which we enjoyed seeing; spinning wheels, shoulder yokes, carpenter tools, animal traps, animal hides, primitive farm implements, etc.

Our second stop in this area was the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky.  It's a fitting name for this beautiful piece of property.

This is the entrance to the property from the parking lot on the left with a small lake in the distance.

The main road of the original town.  All the buildings grew up along side this road.

A view of the buildings to the West.

A view of some of the buildings to the East.

In it's day, 1805-1910, it was the 3rd largest Shaker community in the U.S. What they achieved here was pretty amazing.  What remains of the village only survives because a non-profit organization stepped in in 1961 to preserve and restore what was left of the buildings.  Today, you can actually stay in one of their buildings, eat in their dining room or just meander around the property.  The conservation efforts have been extensive through the years with great success.

This is the dining room.  We had lunch there and it was very good although expensive.
We both had something we'd never eaten before, a root vegetable called salsify.  Had to look it up to see what it was.
It was served with cheese so how can you go wrong?  Our verdict: delicious!

This is one of the buildings undergoing extensive rehabilitation.  It was one of the original living units for the colony. 
Note there are two entry doors, one for women and one for men.  The Shakers believed in celibacy.  Each group had their own quarters for sleeping.  The groups worshiped separately as well although they were in the same building. This well built stone building had heat in ever room, quite unusual for it's time.  I would love to have seen inside it.

Another building with two doors would indicate either a "dormitory" or a house of worship.

The Shakers believed strongly in the equality of men and women and each colony was headed by a man and a woman.  They also had a sort of "board of directors", also composed of equal numbers of men and women.  African-americans were accepted as full brothers and sisters.  It was difficult to become a Shaker because it meant celibacy, giving all your property to the group and working for the good of the community.  On the other hand, you could leave at any time without fear of punishment.

People who were untrained in specialty jobs such as blacksmiths, coopers, harness makers, etc. worked at ordinary type jobs such as cleaning, laundry, cooking, etc. Both men and women worked at these jobs. They were rotated from one position to another after a period of weeks to avoid boredom.  Their colony was extremely successful for a long period of time but it was hard to attract converts because of their vow of celibacy.

Two pictures of the laundry area in one of the buildings.

Products made by Shakers are known to be simple in design, practical and well made. They were the first to make the type of flat brooms that we are familiar with today but they are probably best known for their furniture.

Broom press.  This took a round broom and pressed it into a flat broom.

Simple but beautiful furniture design.

Rocking chair made into a wheelchair.

Examples of their peg rails in use.  Note how you can easily change the height of the item.

More examples of the use of peg rails.

We really enjoyed our day at the Pleasant Hill Shaker Village.  The AAA tour book rated it as a GEM and we completely agree.

I leave you with one last bit of information.  Although the Shakers finally adopted the name Shakers for practical reasons, their actual religion is named: The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing.