Today we took a spin into a couple Kentucky cities with a ton of history behind them. Our first destination was Winchester, not far from our campsite at Fort Boonesboro State Park. On the way out of the park this morning, we tried to see the old Boonesboro fort from the 1700’s but all we found was a small stone foundation about 50 feet on a side. It was not real thrilling.
We headed down the highway to Winchester after this tremendous nothing. Winchester is a gorgeous city with stunning old buildings, most of them made from brick although there are some fabulous wood structures, too. We puttered around and fouled up traffic while gawking at the beautiful buildings. However, we soon figured we didn’t want to get pulled over for impeding traffic so we split and headed to Lexington, about 20 miles west.
Lexington is absolutely magnificent. The traffic lights are irritating but the sections we saw were stunning. Henry Clay, Secretary of State under John Quincy Adams and long term Kentucky statesman, had a really nice place in a neighborhood of staggeringly ornate and unique residences. After cruising Henry’s neighborhood, we drove downtown and, like an idiot, I turned into Lexington’s enormous downtown graveyard. We became lost in this massive city of the dead but not before spotting Henry Clay’s family plot and crypt. He must have been a hell of a guy because his crypt is the biggest in the graveyard and it has a big column with a marble statue of Henry at the top. Today he had a very chubby hawk perched on top of his head.
We also drove by Mary Todd Lincoln’s house. She was Abraham Lincoln’s absolutely bonkers wife who really went gunnybag after Booth shot Lincoln behind the ear. There is an amazing number of other famous folks both in the past and present that call Lexington their home but I can’t remember any of them because I am old. We made one more pass through the astounding downtown area before getting back on a skinny back road toward our campground. The skinny back roads are lined with rock walls made from limestone slabs cleared from the crop lands. Somebody did a ton of work because there are a lot of rocks involved in these roadside walls.
Surprisingly, on the way home we found another access to Fort Boonesboro State Park and drove right up in front of Daniel Boone’s old Boonesboro stockade. It is an amply sized enclosure that looks like it would be nasty to attack. Probably burn okay if you could get the big palisade logs to catch fire but you would have to get in close and Kentuckians were good shots.
We took some photos. To see them, click the asterisk *