A "tour" of Boone County history, visiting prominent historical events and local landmarks.

Shortly after the turn of the Twentieth Century, two things contributed to the national distinction of Florence. First there was a celebrated novel, "Stringtown on the Pike," written by John Uri Lloyd, and then the wonderful successor to the original Northern Kentucky Agricultural and Fair Association.

The original fair was initiated in the last week of April, 1855, when a dozen prominent Boone and Kenton County men leased 40 acres of land for 10 years for one dollar near Florence to hold an agricultural fair.

This fair became an annual project and the Covington Journal listed the premiums in June, and award winners in late September. Among them were names of men and women in Ohio and Indiana, but the majority were from Boone and neighboring counties. Women displayed the handiwork of their looms and spinning wheels while the men had hand-made axe handles, and other articles typical of the era. Both were proud exhibitors of their best fruits, vegetables, farm products, poultry, and live stock.

We leave "old Florence" or Stringtown on the Pike by turning from Main Street to US-42, which in the early 1930's, became the Louisville Road; the major highway from Cincinnati to Louisville. Long before that date, the best road for automobile travel between the two cities was by the way of Falmouth, Cynthiana, Paris and Lexington. A long, tiresome journey over two-lane, hard-surfaced roads which went directly over the streets of every village and town along the way. It was called the Three L Pike -- Latonia to Louisville via Lexington, but when the Dixie Highway, now US-25, was completed in 1926 with concrete from Cincinnati to Lexington, it was soon forgotten. The trip over the "Dixie" was much faster and better. But the long distance left much to be desired for about four or five years; then US-42, a two-lane, concrete highway was completed. It remained as the chief corridor between Cincinnati and Louisville until the 1970's.

The Union Pike, now US-42, was the road to Louisville for years. It has witnessed many changes to its roadway, particularly within the last five decades. In the beginning it was no doubt a buffalo trail through the dense beech woods and onward through more forests to the Big Bone Licks. There it met other similar trails going westerly toward the "falls of the Ohio River." The Freemans Almanack of 1825, printed in Cincinnati, lists Big Bone Springs as the first stop and 20 miles from Cincinnati. Louisville, or the "Falls of the Ohio," was listed as 103 miles.

The winter of January and February, 1895, was long remembered in Boone County. January had some extremely cold days when the mercury plunged far below zero, but in February, which was usually the ice-harvesting month, the Siberian Express passed over the land. The Ohio River was frozen over, steamboats ceased to navigate, and the people had a free bridge, as they called it. At Petersburg, barrels of whiskey were transported to the Indiana side on mule-drawn sleds, and corn was brought back on the return trip for the distillery.

Sub-zero January temperatures were recorded in the county by the Recorder of January the 18th. Burlington, -16° ; J. J. Tanner's, -18° ; W. H. Pope's, -19° ; Petersburg, -14° ; Limaburg, -20°. Traditionally, Limaburg always had the lowest temperature. A report came in that a great many chickens froze to death around the county, and at Gunpowder a well 26 feet deep froze over.

• A Prelude
• The Hopeful Lutheran Church
• Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue
• The Old
• The New
• The Old Replaced by the New
• The Northern Kentucky Fair
• The Florence Schools
• The Vanished and Vanishing Florence
• The Louisville Road
• Southwesterly to Union
• Bound for Beaver
• Berkshire, Ky.
• Verona
• Saint Patrick Church
• Something Borrowed
• The Salem Baptist Church
• Why Boone County?
• The Dry Ridge Trace
• The Ridge Road
• The Georgetown Road
• Walton
• LaFayette Slept Here
• And Something Blue