Historic Markers in Kentucky

Paducah, KY

Organized in 1855 in a log cabin, this congregation was among the earliest African American Baptist churches in Paducah. Enslaved workers built its second, frame home under the Rev. George W. 'Pappy' Dupee, its first pastor, and a brick church rose in 1893. Rebuilt after a 1942 fire and again in the 1960s, the church has anchored its community for well over a century.

Louisville, KY

Incorporated in 1854, the Louisville Water Company built its first pumping station in 1857-60 in a graceful Classical Revival style designed by Theodore R. Scowden and his assistant Charles Hermany, capable of pumping 12 million gallons a day from a well-elevated site with a good coal-boat landing. Its centerpiece is a 169-foot tower enclosing a water standpipe, cast as a Roman Doric column ringed by Corinthian columns topped with Greek figures and an American Indian. Damaged by an 1890 tornado, the station and tower were named National Landmarks in 1971.

Monticello, KY

Wayne County, established in 1800, honors General "Mad Anthony" Wayne, the fiery Revolutionary War hero who stormed Stony Point in 1779. His deepest mark on the future West came in 1794, when his victory at Fallen Timbers and the resulting Treaty of Greenville in 1795 broke Native resistance in the Old Northwest and opened the frontier—including Kentucky—to a surge of settlement. Wayne died in 1796, soon after his triumph.

Lexington, KY

The University of Kentucky began radio broadcasting in 1929 in cooperation with Louisville's WHAS, airing live musical and educational programs from campus studios, and the two later set up battery-powered "listening centers" that brought educational programming to eastern Kentucky. UK launched WBKY in Beattyville in 1941 and moved the station to campus in McVey Hall in 1944; the call letters changed to WUKY in 1989. WBKY/WUKY is the oldest university-owned FM station in the United States and Kentucky's first public radio station.

Paducah, KY

This congregation traces its roots to March 1851, when it was incorporated by an act of the Kentucky General Assembly as a Cumberland Presbyterian Church. After the Cumberland body merged with the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. in 1906, it became Kentucky Avenue Presbyterian Church. In 1951 the congregation moved to a modified Gothic building at this location and adopted the Westminster name.

Oldham County, KY

First called Liberty and laid out on an Elijah Craig land grant of 1780, this Ohio River town found its purpose in the water. A ferry run by Levi Boyer around 1800 linked travelers toward the Illinois country, and in the steamboat era the renamed Westport became a busy port shipping farm produce and receiving merchandise. It even served as Oldham County's first seat from 1823 to 1838.

Williamsburg, KY

Whitley County was formed in 1818 and named, like its seat of Williamsburg, for Colonel William Whitley—a famed Indian fighter credited with leading more than seventeen battles and helping drive Native peoples from southeastern Kentucky by 1794. He joined the Kentucky militia in the War of 1812 and was killed at the Battle of the Thames in 1813. The county's first court met in 1818 in the home of Samuel Cox, Williamsburg's first citizen.

Glasgow, KY

A Glasgow native, Willa Brown Chappell became the first African American woman to earn a U.S. pilot's license in 1937 and, within a few years, the first American woman to hold both mechanic's and commercial pilot's licenses. She co-founded the Coffey School of Aeronautics, which trained Black pilots—some of whom joined the Tuskegee Airmen—and the National Airmen's Association, which pressed to open the Air Force to African Americans. As the first Black officer in the Civil Air Patrol, she became a leading voice for integrating the U.S. military.

Maysville, KY

William G. Kenton, a Maysville native, won election to the Kentucky House in 1969 and rose to become Speaker in 1976 at just 34 years old, serving in that role until his death in 1981. He was known for championing legislative independence—the effort to make the General Assembly a co-equal branch rather than a body dominated by the governor's office—and for opening state government to broader public participation. His service extended a family tradition of Kentucky lawmaking carried by his grandfather W.T. Kenton and great-grandfather Eldridge Kenton.

Greensburg, KY

Greensburg was the 1818 birthplace of William H. Herndon, though the world would remember him from Illinois, where his family soon moved. An outspoken opponent of slavery, Herndon became Abraham Lincoln's law partner from 1844 until Lincoln left for the White House, and he served as mayor of Springfield. After the assassination he devoted himself to preserving his friend's memory, publishing a candid, influential biography in 1889.

Edmonton, KY

Born in Metcalfe County in 1848, William Henry Newman became one of the country's foremost railroad managers. As president of the New York Central Railroad from 1901 to 1909—succeeding the Vanderbilt line of leadership—he merged fourteen lines into the New York Central System and helped plan the Twentieth Century Limited and Grand Central Terminal.

Frankfort, KY

On December 26, 1915, the Women's Club Hospital Company, backed by community support, opened a hospital here and named it for Winnie A. Scott, a local teacher who helped found it. In the segregated era it was the only Frankfort hospital serving African Americans, filling that role until King's Daughters Hospital desegregated in 1959.

Louisville, KY

In the closing years of the 1700s, families pushed into the rolling country east of the Ohio River that would become Jefferson County, Kentucky, and this corridor marked one of the area's earliest waves of settlement. Fertile bottomland and reliable water drew a working community together — farmers tilling the rich soil, millers harnessing the branches to grind grain, tradesmen serving the crossroads, and African-American residents whose labor and lives were woven into the settlement from its beginnings. The old routes preserved here, Wolf Pen and Mint Springs Branch Roads among them, trace the paths those first neighbors wore into the landscape.

Louisville, KY

Zachary Taylor, born in 1784, spent his boyhood on this Louisville-area land as his family carved a plantation out of the Kentucky frontier. He grew up to become a career soldier known as "Old Rough and Ready," whose long service across a string of American wars made him a national hero and carried him to the White House as the twelfth president in 1849. He died in office in 1850.