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97 12 Lexington Mile 0.0 Lexington at Limestone and Main Street. On July 9, 1796, the general merchandise store operated by Abijah and John Wesley Hunt at the corner of Mill and Main streets, two blocks northwest of the Limestone and Main intersection, stood open for business. John Moylan operated another general store nearby. David Meade had arrived in central Kentucky two days earlier, having moved his family and belongings from Prince George County, Virginia, to his new Jessamine County farm home, La Chaumiere des Prairies, on July 7. This day Meade traveled the nine miles from his farm to Lexington in search of what we might consider rather exotic goods—given the time and place. At the Hunts’ store he purchased one-half bushel of salt, probably the product of one of Kentucky’s salt licks, one and one-half yards of cloth, three and one-half yards of black velvet, two skeins of silk, one and one-half yards of linen, and one plume. Though Meade’s shopping list suggests that someone in his household had a special sewing project in mind, he could have chosen from a broad range of goods that the Hunts kept in stock, some of it supplied by local or regional sources, such as paper and hardware, butter, bacon, eggs, and whiskey. But the store also stocked items imported from distant foreign sources, some of which David Meade purchased, that had no doubt arrived in East Coast ports such as Philadelphia.1 As account ledgers kept by John Moylan and the Hunts suggest, Lexington’s residents and businesses had at their disposal by the 1790s commodities gleaned from sources around the world, assembled by coastal port merchants, and supplied by Ohio River boats and freight wagons negotiating the Maysville Road. Lexington’s original street plat was part of an application for town status made by early settlers and approved by the Virginia legislature in 1781. Two primary streets, Cross Street and Mulberry Street, ran northeast from the town common. Mulberry Street was renamed Limestone Street in 1887 because it connected directly with the Limestone or Maysville Road; Cross Street became Broadway. The intersection of Limestone and Main streets, where the Lexington end of the Maysville Road begins, became a key access node around which developed the city’s commercial business area. Moreover, this intersection remained an important location in the city for more than a century and a half because it was the point where the region’s major roads crossed. North Limestone was the Maysville Road. South Limestone extended southwest to 98  The Maysville Road: A Landscape Biography Nicholasville, the Jessamine County seat, and so became Nicholasville Road. The road to Richmond, the seat of Madison County to the south, became South Main Street. One branch of the Richmond road led south to Athens, and an additional road led to the Kentucky River near where the steep-gradient tributary Lower Howards Creek joins the trunk stream. The middle section of Lower Howards Creek would become one of Kentucky’s first large-scale industrial sites, encompassing numerous mills and residences for mill operators and workers. On the Kentucky River’s west side, not far upstream, stood Boonesborough, Daniel Boone’s frontier fort. North Main Street connected to the state capital at Frankfort, to Versailles, the Woodford County seat to the west, and north to Georgetown. The road to Frankfort, in turn, ran west to Louisville . From Georgetown the road led north to Covington and Cincinnati. The intersection was therefore a major focus in the great road-and-river quadrilateral that linked Lexington to the Ohio River by way of Louisville, Covington, and Maysville. In 1926 the city erected a Zero Milepost at the Union Railroad Station on Main Street. The venerable post, topped by a small statue of a caravan camel, marked the beginning point for measuring mileage from Lexington. Workers moved the marker corporate bdry corporate bdry corporate bdry BOURBON CO CLARK CO FAY ETT E CO FAYETTE CO SCOTT CO BO U R B O N C O corporate bdry corporate bdry corporate bdry BOURBON CO CLARK CO FAY ETT E CO FAYETTE CO SCOTT CO BO U R B O N C O 57 4 4 922 1681 4 353 859 1678 627 27 25 68 60 421 60 25 27 68 68 27 75 64 75 64 0 5 miles 1 2 3 4 Lexington Paris Avon Hutchison Monterey Jimtown Loradale Mattoxtown Muir Sidville Escondida Clintonville Wyandotte Old...

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