For more information:

• City of Augusta, 219 Main St., Augusta, KY 41002, (606) 756-2183

Historic Streets

Augusta

This little Ohio River town near Cincinnati was incorporated in 1797 and almost immediately became a stopping place for boats traveling the river. A ferry connecting Augusta with Brown County, Ohio was put into service in 1800 and continues to operate every day except Christmas (weather permitting).

Augusta’s history is colored with dark periods that include floods, a cholera epidemic, and looting and burning by John Hunt Morgan’s raiders during the Civil War. But today it is a quiet town known for beautiful old homes and wonderful river views.

For more information:
• Falls of the Ohio State Park, 201 West Riverside Dr., Clarksville, IN 47129, (812) 280-9970

Ancient Animals

The Falls of the Ohio

The “falls” is not really a waterfall at all, but a series of rapids on the Indiana side of the Ohio River near Louisville. But that rough water created enough of a barrier to navigation—the only natural obstacle along the entire length of the Ohio—that early explorers and the settlers who followed had to stop at what is now Louisville and portage their goods around. Some simply stayed, and the city rapidly became an important inland port and transportation hub. In 1803, Meriwether Lewis met William Clark at the Falls of the Ohio to start their now-famous expedition to explore the newly acquired territories of the Louisiana Purchase.

When the river’s water level is low, an even more ancient history is revealed in the form of 380 million-year-old Devonian Era fossil beds. The Falls of the Ohio fossil beds are among the largest naturally exposed beds of that age in the world.

Kentucky Life first went fossil hunting at the falls in Program 314. We also explored the system of locks and dams that finally tamed the rapids in Program 714. The falls and their fossils are also the subjects of a KET Electronic Field Trip.

For more information: Speed Art Museum, 2035 S. 3rd St., Louisville, KY 40208, (502) 634-2700

Cultural Collection

Speed Art Museum

The Speed Art Museum in Louisville was founded in 1927 by Hattie Bishop Speed as a tribute to her late husband, James Breckinridge Speed, a businessman, philanthropist, and art collector. At the time, there was no other notable art museum in the state. Though several other fine examples have since been established, the Speed remains Kentucky’s largest.

Physically, the Speed has grown to five times its original size. Its collections contain 13,000 works by local artists as well as European masters like Cézanne, Monet, Picasso, and Rembrandt, whose Portrait of a Woman is the museum’s most famous piece. About 500 of the works are on display at any given time.

KET also visited the Speed for one of our classroom Electronic Field Trips.