The Kentucky River

Download or read book The Kentucky River written by William E. Ellis and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping cultural history, The Kentucky River reflects the rich tapestry of life along the banks. Flowing with tales of river ghosts and hidden treasures lying in the backwaters, the book records the myths and events the river has spawned. Bill Ellis also celebrates the Kentucky's influence on such figures as writer Wendell Berry and painter Paul Sawyier. Beginning with an intriguing overview of the river's formation and characteristics, Ellis shows how the stream has helped shape Kentucky's environment, economy, and political culture. In centuries past, flotillas of flatboats carried whiskey, pork, and valuable raw materials downriver to markets in Louisiana. Later, the river became a source of entertainment as showboats brought theater, movies, music, and dancing to otherwise isolated communities. The book describes the environmental impact of settlement, logging, mining, and industrialization, developments that have sometimes tainted the Kentucky's mighty waters with silt, sewage, and trash. In the last thirty years, however, Kentuckians have come together in major efforts to clean and preserve the Kentucky's waters and the life along its banks. Advocates for the river achieved a victory in protecting the stunning Kentucky River Palisades between Boonesborough and Frankfort, and efforts continue to preserve the irreplaceable river for future generations.

Download or read book The Green River of Kentucky written by Helen Bartter Crocker and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cutting a wide east-west swath from the Appalachian foothills to the heart of the western Kentucky coalfields, the Green River valley extends from below the Tennessee border in the south to the Ohio River in the north. The Green River of Kentucky presents a picture of the unity and diversity of the people living in the Green River valley. Helen Bartter Crocker finds that each generation of its people approached the river in a distinctive way. Early settlers used the river simply as it was—crooked and narrow with an unpredictable water flow, and navigable only under high-water conditions. The sons of these pioneers were interested in bringing steamboats to the valley; until they succeeded in persuading the state legislature to improve the Green River and its tributary, the Barren, by a series of locks and dams, however, volunteers would work—often up to their necks in water—until they cleared the river sufficiently to allow steamers to reach Bowling Green at high water. When the locks and dams were reopened following the Civil War, a local private corporation gained a near-monopoly of the river trade. Public outcry against this private ownership caused the federal government to take control, and through the Corps of Engineers, to undertake extensive river improvements. After the Great Depression, when trade was almost at a standstill, additional federal funds were appropriated for flood-control dams in the upper river and modern locks in the lower river to harness the valley's industrial potential. These opened up coal barging and recreational facilities, which ensured the future economic well being of the Green River valley.

Download or read book The Kentucky written by and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 1992 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its origins in the Cumberland Mountains to its entry into the Ohio, the Kentucky River flows through two areas that have made Kentucky known throughout the world -- the mountains in the eastern part of the state and the Bluegrass in its center. In The Kentucky, Thomas D. Clark paints a rich panorama of history and life along the river, peopled with the famous and infamous, ordinary folk and legendary characters. It is a canvas distinctly emblematic of the American experience. The Kentucky was first published in 1942 as part of the ""Rivers of America"" series and has long been out of pr.

Download or read book River Of Earth written by James Still and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2013-12-06 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a poor family in Appalachia, pulled between the despair of their meager farm and the promise offered by the mining camp, as seen through the eyes of a small boy.

Download or read book The Kentucky River Navigation written by Mary Verhoeff and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the Southern Appalachians the topography of the river basins is so closely related to the economic life of the people that the geographer and geologist, the historian and sociologist find here a meeting round. To all of them, there is offered a vast, unexploited field for intensive investigation. The Kentucky River is in many respects a typical stream of the region. It is of national significance in that the United States Government has expended large sums for its improvement, and must provide for the maintenance of the slack-water system now almost completed.

Download or read book Crawfish Bottom written by Douglas Boyd and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2011-08-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A small neighborhood in northern Frankfort, Kentucky, Crawfish Bottom was located on fifty acres of swampy land along the Kentucky River. “Craw’s” reputation for vice, violence, moral corruption, and unsanitary conditions made it a target for urban renewal projects that replaced the neighborhood with the city’s Capital Plaza in the mid-1960s. Douglas A. Boyd’s Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community traces the evolution of the controversial community that ultimately saw four-hundred families displaced. Using oral histories and firsthand memories, Boyd not only provides a record of a vanished neighborhood and its culture but also demonstrates how this type of study enhances the historical record. A former Frankfort police officer describes Craw’s residents as a “rough class of people, who didn’t mind killing or being killed.” In Crawfish Bottom, the former residents of Craw acknowledge the popular misconceptions about their community but offer a richer and more balanced view of the past.

Download or read book A Canoeing and Kayaking Guide to Kentucky written by Bob Sehlinger and published by Menasha Ridge Press. This book was released on 2011-06-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At-a-glance information for each river section helps paddlers determine the river that's right for them. Stream overviews, gauge and shuttle information, names of rapids and suggestions on how to run them, along with a little history, make this guide not only an interesting read, but a must for every boater hitting the Kentucky streams.