Description
Book Synopsis Kentucky is richly blessed with rivers. This book tells the stories of three of the most beautiful and historic: the Rolling Fork, the Nolin, and the Rough. Each is an unpredictable force of nature flowing through a land that varies from wide, sunny meadows to dark, rock-bound hollows.
Chapters describe the people who lived in the river valleys, including pioneers, frontier preachers, a future president, cave explorers, Confederate and Union soldiers, desperate killers, hardscrabble farmers, and inspired visionaries. Sometimes they were wasteful and violent and vain; at other times they were inventive and graceful and kind. Their descendants realized that survival had come to mean something new: living in harmony with the land and the rivers.
Table of Contents
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments vii
- Preface 1
- Part One—The Rolling Fork
- Introduction 5
- One. The Struggle Begins 7
- Two. Trailblazers 12
- Three. Whiskey and Salt 22
- Four. The Catholics Arrive 27
- Five. The Struggles of Thomas Lincoln 34
- Six. Steamboats and Railroads 41
- Seven. Thunder in the Valley 46
- Eight. Struggling Just to Live 60
- Nine. Too Dry, Then Too Wet 64
- Ten. The Rolling Fork Today 71
- Part Two—The Nolin River
- Introduction 83
- Eleven. The First People 85
- Twelve. The River Gets a New Name 90
- Thirteen. Devil on the Loose 96
- Fourteen. Two Presidents, Two Fathers 103
- Fifteen. The Remarkable Stephen 109
- Sixteen. Blue and Gray on the Nolin 118
- Seventeen. The Prosperous Years 129
- Eighteen. Progress 139
- Nineteen. Hard Times 145
- Twenty. The Nolin Today 152
- Part Three—Rough River
- Introduction 159
- Twenty-One. The Legend of Spanish Fort 160
- Twenty-Two. Settlers and Speculators 163
- Twenty-Three. Murder at Pine Knob 174
- Twenty-Four. Falls of Rough 182
- Twenty-Five. The Price of War 189
- Twenty-Six. Confederates 200
- Twenty-Seven. Sinews of Steel 207
- Twenty-Eight. Dying Time 218
- Twenty-Nine. That High, Lonesome Sound 225
- Thirty. Rough River Today 234
- Chapter Notes 241
- Bibliography and Note to Readers 259
- Index 273
