Fort-on-Shore
Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
Fort-on-Shore. This site marks the location of Fort-on-Shore, which was the the first building erected on the mainland when General George Rogers Clark and the settlers of Corn Island came ashore. The stockade and fort, built 1778-79 on orders from General Clark, represented the first settlementin what is now Louisville. (Reverse) Corn Island was located in the Ohio River, just adjacent to this site at what is today Twelfth St. Stockade was occupied by troops of the American Revolution for the next four years. In 1782, Fort-on-Shore was replaced by Fort Nelson, a much larger fortification built north of present-day Main St.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
When George Rogers Clark and the settlers who had wintered on Corn Island came ashore in 1778, they raised Fort-on-Shore—the first building on the mainland at the site of present-day Louisville. Built on Clark's orders during the American Revolution, the stockade sheltered troops for four years before it was replaced in 1782 by the larger Fort Nelson. The island that gave the settlers their first foothold once lay in the Ohio River just off this spot.
Why it matters
This ground marks the founding of Louisville and the American push into the Ohio Valley during the Revolution, when frontier forts secured the western edge of the new nation.
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Related people
- · George Rogers Clark
Related events
- · American Revolution
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Rogers Station, 1780
Nelson County, KY
In the dangerous years of the Revolution, frontier surveyor and soldier James Rogers marked out a thousand-acre claim here in 1775 and by 1780 had planted a fortified station on it. A veteran of Dunmore's War and the Revolution, Rogers was commissioned a militia colonel and justice of the peace by Virginia's governor Patrick Henry, and he signed the early petitions asking that Kentucky be separated from Virginia. Stations like his were the seeds of permanent settlement.
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Henry County, formed in 1798, carries the name of Patrick Henry, the Virginia orator whose cry of "liberty or death" helped ignite the American Revolution. A fixture of the House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress, he served as Virginia's first post-colonial governor and later opposed ratifying the Constitution until a Bill of Rights was added—rights the nation soon adopted. He declined a string of high federal offices to remain in Virginia.
Nelson County Named, 1784
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Nelson County, formed in 1784, honors Thomas Nelson (1738–89), a Virginia planter-statesman who served in the House of Burgesses, the first provincial convention, and the Continental Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence. As commander of the Virginia militia and wartime governor, he is remembered for ordering American guns to fire on his own house at Yorktown when the British made it their headquarters.
Gov. George Madison
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