Fort Harrod Tour
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James Harrod’s Expedition
In 1774, James Harrod and a company of frontiersmen set out from Pennsylvania by river to explore America’s western frontier. After traveling down the Monongahela and Ohio, they followed the Kentucky River to its junction with a creek called Landings Run. There they left their canoes and continued overland, crossing the Salt River into what is now Mercer County, Kentucky. They made camp at a large spring on June 16, christening the spot Harrod’s Town. It would become the first permanent European settlement west of the Allegheny Mountains.
At the center of the original town was a fortification named Fort Harrod. The fort seen today on the site is a reconstruction built in 1927, across the road from the original fort site.