Engineering the Kentucky River: The Commonwealth's Waterway
Abstract
The Kentucky River laces through the Commonwealth's history like a varicolored thread. For untold centuries this river scoured, cut, and opened a channel through seemingly impenetrable barriers of stone to drain a third of the State of Kentucky. Over the centuries there gathered along its banks a galaxy of human occupants, ranging from those Paleolithic wanderers who left abundant artifactual evidence of their passage to the arrival of Euro-American peoples. The Kentucky profoundly influenced all of them as, paradoxically, a gathering and a divisive range line in every stage of human history. The cardinal, indeed the central, chapter in its history was the struggle to open the river as a transportation outlet for shipping products of the fertile land it drains. Leland R. Johnson and Charles E. Parrish have diligently and thoroughly ferreted out details of the various efforts to make it serve transportation needs. They present graphic accounts of commerce on the river, even listing cargo manifests of boats plying the stream and tracing the steamboat and towboat tonnages of Kentucky products traveling it for sale at domestic and foreign markets. The authors have resurrected from the morgue of Kentucky documentary sources the pertinent records of Kentucky's convoluted campaign to build internal improvements-macadam roads, railroads, and slackwatered rivers. They relate gubernatorial, legislative, and business interests in these pioneer transportation projects, focusing on the efforts to build locks and dams on the Kentucky River. The movement to create slackwater pools for navigation on the Kentucky River challenged boatmen, engineers, and public officials at every step. Locking the Kentucky behind fourteen dams and locks required prodigious engineering skills and daring, heavy capital investments, and a generous share of luck.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1999
- Accession Number
- ADA635500
Entities
People
- Charles E. Parrish
- Leland R. Johnson
Organizations
- United States Army Corps of Engineers