| Program 617 |  |
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For more information:
Producer, videographer: Dave Shuffett |
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Abraham Lincoln Toddled Here Knob Hill Farm In Larue County, just outside Hodgenville, a marble monument marks the spot where Abraham Lincoln came into the world. (That’s not the actual Lincoln family log cabin inside, but a facsimile representing historians’ best guess at what it probably looked like.) That place is a National Historic Site, and tourists dutifully stop off to pay homage to the president who led America through the Civil War. But about ten miles down the road, there’s another, lesser-known stop on the Lincoln Trail: Knob Hill Farm, where the family lived during Abe’s early childhood. The Lincolns moved to Knob Hill when baby Abraham was 2 and lived there until moving to Indiana when he was 7. So this Kentucky Life visit to the farm lets history buffs see the same vistas that greeted Lincoln as he was first exploring the world around him. At the time, Knob Hill Farm was not a national park, but a group of local citizens was working to raise the money to buy the property and donate it to the National Park Service. Their efforts paid off on November 6, 2001, when Knob Creek Farm officially became federal property. It is now administered as part of the Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site. Kentucky Life paid a second visit to Knob Hill in Program 1118. To further explore Lincoln’s family roots in Kentucky, you can visit Lincoln Homestead State Park in Washington County, which preserves the house where Lincoln’s parents met and courted. By the way, Kentucky does have a Lincoln County, too—but it’s not connected with Abe’s family. In fact, it predated the future president’s birth by 29 years. Created during the Revolutionary War, it was named for Benjamin Lincoln, an American general who was a prisoner of the British at the time. |
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For more information: Producer: Ernie Lee Martin |
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Where Lexington Sprang Into Being McConnell Springs And speaking of the Revolutionary War ... Our next segment continues the theme of “beginnings” with a visit to McConnell Springs, site of the founding of Lexington. In 1775, William McConnell and a group of fellow frontier explorers were camped by a spring in what is now Central Kentucky when they got the word that the first battle of the Revolution had been fought in Massachusetts at a town called Lexington. Then and there, they christened their campsite Lexington in its honor. The permanent spring made it a natural place for a settlement, and eventually Lexington would become Kentucky’s second largest city (and one of the largest cities in America not located on a more substantial body of water). Over the next two centuries, the grounds of the original campsite hosted, in succession, a mill, a gunpowder factory, a distillery, and a dairy farm. Abandoned in the mid-20th century, McConnell Springs was “rediscovered” in the mid-1970s, when author Carolyn Murray-Wooley published her book The Founding of Lexington. In 1993, the Friends of McConnell Springs was formed to buy the land and begin turning it into a center for education in both history and nature. After removing hundreds of tons of trash, the Friends created a hiking trail, stabilized the ruins of past buildings, and built an amphitheater and an Education Center. McConnell Springs is now a park administered by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government and is on the National Register of Historic Places. McConnell Springs is located just outside downtown Lexington off Old Frankfort Pike. |
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For more information:
Producer, videographer: Treg Ward |
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Where There’s Smoke Airport firefighter training Things are heating up at Lexington’s Blue Grass Airport, where Kentucky Life visits an unusual training session for firefighters. Designed for crews responding to an airport emergency, this training focuses on fighting blazes on and around airplanes, where the presence of jet fuel creates special hazards. Our visit features dramatic footage of crews practicing at night, using a mock airplane fuselage. |
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 Producer: Ernie Lee Martin |
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Home Sweet Cabin Log cabins around the state In a way, the final segment in this episode circles back around to where we started, with a salute to the humble log cabin. But while Abraham Lincoln and family lived in log cabins out of practical necessity, the Kentuckians featured here have deliberately chosen them for their rustic feel. Our short tour includes a historian preserving a cabin as a tribute to the past and an artist who just likes coming home to walls made of logs. |
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