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EXPLORING
KENTUCKY- January 2002 by Katherine Tandy Brown From Night Riders to Edgar Cayce
Many years have passed since I left “Hoptown” at 16, and though I’d been back a time or two in the interim, a post-Thanksgiving visit left me more than impressed at the visitor-friendly city it’s become while maintaining a palpable rural charm. Still standing sentry, the 1892 depot where both Teddy Roosevelt and Wild Bill Cody first glimpsed Hopkinsville is now refurbished. It is a handsome illustration of an ongoing downtown renaissance evident in a brand new, under-construction courthouse and in the 1976 transition of a venerable, ionic-columned 1914 post office into the Pennyroyal Area Museum. Expansive in scope, the collection paints the history of the Southern Pennyrile (a colloquial version of “Pennyroyal”) through well-researched exhibits that include a complete 1940s dental office that made my jaws ache, a creamy white 1909 Buick Model 10 (original cost: $1,200), a model circus reputed to have inspired first American Poet Laureate Robert Penn Warren (from nearby Guthrie) to pen “Circus in the Attic,” and a report on a 1955 spaceship landing in the tiny community of Kelly, the event that spawned the term “little green men.” When my grandmother was six, she peeked out to watch the Night Riders – masked vigilantes in the 1907 dark fire tobacco war – gallop past her house on Main Street, headed downtown with pistols blazing to commandeer the sheriff’s office and the telephone and telegraph offices. Not only does the museum feature fascinating history about this, but offers an annual September Night Rider Tour, when visitors aboard hay wagons witness a nighttime re-enactment with colorful Christian County historian Bill Turner providing the play-by-play. Several times a year, Turner also hosts “Dinner in the Cemetery,” a fundraiser for the museum that features a box dinner and riveting tales of a few of the graveyard’s more unusual residents. One of those, Hopkinsville native and clairvoyant Edgar Cayce, springs to life at the museum and on another tour led by Turner, a Cayce relative. The tour includes places the psychic counselor had roots, including an 1889 renovated schoolhouse on Turner’s farm near the Cayce home and his aforementioned grave site. Every March, enthusiasts from around the world attend the museum’s Edgar Cayce Seminar to discuss his philosophies and to visit those hallowed spots. A sacred place to Native Americans, the 14.5-acre Trail of Tears Commemorative Park sits on a portion of the campground used by a number of the 16,000 Cherokee Indians in 1838 on the cruel forced march from North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama to government-designated resettlement land Oklahoma. Among the thousands who died on this march were two chiefs, Fly Smith and Whitepath. Both are buried here facing the sunrise, and are commemorated by poignantly-realistic statues crafted by a fine local sculptor, the late Steve Shields, as well as by a planting of seven red chief dogwood trees representing the seven Cherokee clans. On the fence surrounding the chiefs’ graves hang dozens of tiny “medicine bags” and dream catchers left by pilgrims. “The Cherokee followed what we now know as Highway 41 from East Tennessee,” the park’s chief volunteer, gardener and guide Joyce Mattison explains. “They always camped by water and Little River runs right through the park...It was very cold, and the townspeople put the elderly, women and children in church basements and tobacco warehouses. “The town doctors came out to offer to help the two chiefs, but they’d have nothing to do with the white man’s medicine. Both were 72 and died here within hours of one another.” The only non-funded Trail of Tears park in the country, this National Trail Park site relies totally on donations and on proceeds from an annual Intertribal Pow Wow held the weekend after Labor Day. “It’s like a big old-fashioned church gathering,” Mattison chuckled. “Tribes gather, and there’s dancing, story telling, Indian cooking and arrowhead making, plus 35 or so vendors, all authentic. Many bring their tepees and camp across the river.” Open April through November, the park is distinguished by flags of the seven states the trek passed through, outdoor informational plaques for after-hours visitors and a Heritage Center housed in a restored 1800 log cabin that’s rich with Cherokee and Plains Indian history. Its array of fascinating artifacts include ceremonial headdresses, vintage firearms, an original stick from a ball game used to settle tribal disputes, seven wooden clan masks, “tear dresses” made without the use of scissors and a timeworn family Bible. A number of items were donated by Nathaniel Mooreland, an 80-something full-blooded Cherokee and the sole surviving member of a family who left North Carolina in 1808, “Every year we have people from all over the country driving the Trail of Tears,” said Cook. “I think a lot of people come here because they feel bad about how the Native Americans were treated, because they were so abused. I think they come to pay their respects.” Many folks also pay respects at Fort Campbell Memorial Park, created to honor 248 soldiers who died December 12, 1985 at Gander, Newfoundland, when returning from a peacekeeping mission in the Sinai. Another lovely Shields sculpture, a lone soldier, stands guard over the peaceful green space with its 248 Bradford pear trees, willow-shaded spring and waterfall. Because of Ft. Campbell’s proximity, the Hopkinsville Chamber of Commerce has a military affairs director and hosts a number of military reunions (such as the national 101st Airborne reunion in 2000) as well as an annual Ft. Campbell Week, with all events free to the military. Those include a Military and Civilian ball, Mayors’ Golf Scramble, parachute team demonstration, tour of homes, chaplain exchange, luncheons, the Battalion Spirit Run – where 10,000 soldiers are running through the streets – and a chili cook-off. Located within the base, the Don F. Pratt Memorial Museum traces the history of the “Screaming Eagles” of the 101st from WWII to Vietnam and Desert Storm. Because only a third of its collection can be displayed, the facility soon will combine forces to form an expansive Wings of Liberty Museum to be built right on I-24. Just as Brigadier General Pratt inspired the men of the 101st, so Hopkinsville Community College English instructor Frances Thomas inspired her creative writing students in 1965. Not only did they create a literary magazine, called The Round Table, but they also helped establish a novel park right on campus. Built as “a motivating symbol for students in their pursuit for wisdom and excellence,” the Round Table Literary Park features a 22,000-pound, life-sized replica of King Arthur’s Round Table, his Sword in the Stone, Melpomene the Muse of Tragedy (another beautifully-sculpted work by Shields), a Greco-Roman amphitheater, a medieval wall and the three-columned Delphian Tholos, or temple. Used as an oak-shaded outdoor classroom, the park is the site of the annual presentation of the latest Round Table magazine and literary awards, and of the Hoptown Reading Series, where regionally and nationally-recognized authors perform their work. Performances are the order of the day at Hopkinsville’s annual Jazz and Blues Festival the fourth weekend in June, when bands will set your toes to tappin’ well into the night downtown in Little River Park. If you’re a fan of fruit of the vine, make an appointment for a tour and tasting at Bravard Vineyard & Winery, a small, family-owned business in North Christian County. In those lovely rolling hills, you’ll also find Brushy Fork Creek Gallery, a well-respected pottery and wood-turning gallery; Amazing Acres, a family farm where you can ogle an ostrich, hop on a hayride and churn butter; and Copper Canyon Ranch, a replicated 1800s mining town with staged gunfights and guided horseback rides. Watch Santa ride behind his reindeer at Hoptown’s annual Christmas parade and tree lighting, followed by a free open house at the Pennyroyal Museum with crafts, music and edible goodies. Be sure to check out the gorgeous light displays at Trail of Tears Park. And finish your gift-gathering at the Christmas Creations Craft Show the weekend before Thanksgiving. Or hit town in May during Little River Days for food booths with famous West Kentucky barbecue, multi-stage live music, arts and crafts, and road and bike races. Tie Breaker Park, an impressive new sports complex, hosts such events as the 12-and-under World Series, College Mid-South Conference Girls Softball and Girls’ Kentucky State Fast Pitch Softball. The local CVB offers grants to non-profits who bring groups in for sporting events and conferences. A 50,000-square-foot convention center is slated to open in 2003. Just thinking about all that activity can rouse an appetite, and the best cure is a juicy hamburger at Ferrell’s Snappy Service. Established in 1936, the eight-stool downtown institution is an official Kentucky landmark, holding its own amid a city that’s embracing remarkable growth. What my visit to Hopkinsville proved
to me is that Thomas Wolfe was wrong. You can go home again. Katherine Tandy
Brown is a staff writer for The Lane Report. |
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Copyright 1996-2002, by Kentucky Business Online. All rights reserved. Editorial content
is copyright 2002, Lane Communications Group The Lane Report is a trademark of Lane Communications Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
As
a treat when I was six, my father used to take my older sister and me
to the L&N depot on Ninth Street in Hopkinsville. Gripping each
of us tightly by the hand, he’d stand about six feet from the tracks
just as a huge iron horse came chugging into the station. Gazing up
at that mighty hissing beast, I was both terrified and thrilled.