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43 4 Regional Context Kentucky’s territory is neatly demarcated into sharply contrasting regions by emphatic changes in bedrock, surface topography, and concomitant variation in soils and natural vegetation. Though scientists would eventually explain the rationale for these regional divisions, and their implications for resources—salt for food preservation, iron for tools and utensils, and fertile soils for farming—immigrant folk knowledge of one section ’s advantages over another for economic development was couched in practical experience gained in other climes. The state’s entire topographic surface is underlain by sedimentary rocks, largely sandstones, limestones, and shales, and there are extensive coal measures in the eastern and western sections. The eastern quarter is part of the Appalachian Plateau, a high-elevation, stream-dissected upland that is the headwaters for major streams that flow northwest toward the Ohio River—the Big Sandy, the Licking, the North, Middle , and South Forks of the Kentucky, and the Cumberland rivers. Though the region was rich in coal and iron deposits, the first explorers and settlers did not deem its steep slopes and nearly impenetrable hardwood forests attractive for agriculture-based settlement . Traveling through the Cumberland Gap to central Kentucky in 1796, the mining entrepreneur Moses Austin observed that the eastern Kentucky wilderness was “a Disagreeable broken Mountain Country but some good lands, and will be in time Sufficiently settled to furnish Travellers, but can Never be a desirable Country.”1 Whether immigrants traveled from the southeast by way of the Cumberland Gap– Wilderness Road, or the northeast and the Ohio River–Maysville Road, in their minds Kentucky was synonymous with the central limestone plains, the region that became known as the Bluegrass. Most early travelers, whether they were prospective settlers scouting for new business or social opportunities or scientists intent on examining the natural environment for scholarly publications, found that the Bluegrass plain was not a uniform place. Rather, its topographical attributes differed dramatically from one section to another. Needham Parry, seeking settlement opportunities in Kentucky in 1794, traveled down the Ohio River to Limestone. At Washington, four miles south of the river, Parry noted that the land there was “quite as rich as I expected, but not so level, nor any good water, it being in Mason County.”2 Proceeding south along the road toward the Licking River, he “came to thinner land, which got worse and worse untill 44  Overland Roads and the Epic of Kentucky’s Settlement we came to the Blue Lick, where it was as poor and as stony as the pine barrens. At this place there is a Salt Spring, and salt works just erecting. This Salt Spring smells strong of sulphur or gun-powder, and looks as black as the blackest swamp water.” South of the salt spring, Parry crossed “about 3 miles through stony, poor land.”3 The next day Parry found that four to five miles south of Blue Licks the land began to improve. At Millersburg on Hinkston Creek, he found “the land here being excellent, and timbered with Walnut, Honey Locust, Buckeye, and Cherry trees.”4 By listing walnut and locust trees first, Parry may have been acknowledging a long-standing folk tradition of associating these species with naturally high-fertility soils. At Paris, in Bourbon County, Parry found “the land adjacent to this place is as good as it can well be.”5 An English farmer, William Faux, traveling the Maysville Road in 1819, thought the area adjacent to the Ohio “a fine country,” but farther south he “rode over an extent of hills, 20 miles, so flinty and barren, that the plough never could and never will touch it. The hogs that grunt and roam over it look lean, hungry, and starved. The few inhabitants live by hunting.”6 At Lexington, though Faux thought the city proper “filthy, neglected, and in ruins, particularly the court-house, the temple of justice” he found that the surrounding land was “rich, cultivated, cleared, and . . . looks much like the best districts of Old England, only the soil of Kentucky is better.”7 The French botanist André Michaux traversed this same country in 1793, as did his son, the naturalist François André Michaux, in 1802. Though they were trained as scientific observers, their assessments of Bluegrass land quality were similar to those of other travelers. South of Mayslick, François Michaux found the land “dry and sandy; the road . . . covered with immense flat chalky stones, of a blueish cast inside, the edges of which are...

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