USA > Kentucky > Jefferson County > Louisville > The city of Louisville and a glimpse of Kentucky > Part 5
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29
About 1808, in Shippingport, an iron hatchet was found under the center of an immense tree over six feet in diame- ter, whose roots extended thirty or forty feet in each direction. The tree was cut down and its roots removed to make
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room for the foundation of Tarascon's great mill. The hatchet was evidently formed out of a flat bar of wrought iron heated to redness and bent double, leaving a round hole at the joint for the reception of a handle, the two ends being nicely welded together and hammered to a cutting edge. The tree was over 200 years old, and the hatchet could not have been placed under it in the particular position in which it was found. It must have been there before the tree was, and the latter grew up aud its roots spread over it.
The existence of the tradition of a pre-historic hattle, and the importance of the position in the war for the con- quest of the North-west territory, show that Louisville has always been a spot of interest. It was to the military epi- sodes of the mound-builders and Indians, what Troy was to the Greeks and Trojans : The one place upon which all their greatest exploits centered.
Upon the great plain where these fabled events occurred, the first comers to the falls of the Ohio saw the opportu- nity for building a city at the head of navigation. The Ohio river flows in a long and beautiful curve about the north- ern and western boundary of the county of Jefferson. The middle part of the county, comprising the plain, is rich, productive, and highly cultivated. There are innumerable fine farms for the production of vegetables and fruit to sup- ply the city market. The city is seventy feet above low water mark, and twenty feet above the highest flood mark, with a front of ten miles. The plan of the city is regular and beautiful, the principal streets running parallel with the river. The streets are sixty feet in width, except Main, Market, aud Jefferson, the principal busi- ness thoroughfares, which are nine- ty, and Broadway and South Third, residence streets, which are one hundred and twenty. Broadway, when its destiny shall have been accomplished, will be the finest street in the world. The head of the street is at the entrance to Cave Hill Cemetery, ahont two hundred feet above the general level, and theuce by an easy slope it sweeps An Old-fashioned Residence. away seven miles, in an almost
straight line, to the magnificent natural harhor west of the city. Across the Ohio from the harbor are the famous Indiana " Knobs," a range of hills about five hundred feet high, much sought by the wealthy for summer residences. Upon the tops and sides of this range of hills there is a flora en- tirely distinct from that of the sur- rounding country. The mountain laurel, azaleas, and rhododendrons grow in profusion and all the hardy nuts and wild strawberries. From the eminence the view is superli, extending over a radius of nearly fifty miles. So capable a critic as Bayard Taylor has pronounced the view and the sunsets from the "Knohs" as among the finest he had met with in his travels. These hills are a contin- uation of Muldraugh's range, which crosses the Ohio below New Albany, and traverses Kentucky north and south to the center of the State. In the rear of Louisville are several remarkably symmetrical and graceful hills, grouped on the plain, evidently stragglers from this range. They rest the eye in a magnificent perspective from Highland Park. On the east of the city is a range of sharp hills, dotted with suburhan residences, called "The Highlands." From the summit of the New Albany hills the cities of the Falls may be seen spread out iu birdseye map beneath.
The first actual settlement at Louisville was made in 1778, upon an island in front of the landing, christened Corn Island. The last vestiges of this were swept away by the rapids some years ago. The first fort was built on the main- laud in 1780, aud in 1782 Fort Nelson was erected on what is now the north side of Main street, hetween Sixth and Seventh, opposite the Louisville Hotel. In 1844, while excavating on this spot for a cellar, the remains of timbers, forming the base of General Clark's block-house, were discovered. It was possibile to trace the extent of the enclosure, which took in a fine spring on the bank of the river. From this rude beginning the present beautiful city has grown. There has never been a decade when its growth was not steady and rapid. So practical aud pushing were the people that the place remorselessly sacrificed all historical land-marks and relics, few of which can be pointed out in the modern town.
In the absence of relics of the first settlement of Louisville, it is interesting to note that the most minute historical memoranda of the pioneer period have been collected into a private library, which forms one of the most valuable and important monuments of patient and discriminating research in America. This is the library of Colonel Renben T. Durrett, celebrated as a historical writer and collector of material concerning the political and social progress of Virginia and Kentucky. The collection represents forty-five years' labor of a gentleman of rare culture and education and of liberal mind. It contains prints, paintings, drawings, and maps of pioneer persons and places, of which, in many instances, no duplicates exist and no expenditure of means could replace their loss. Colonel Durrett's library can be nominally valned at a quarter of a million dollars ; it is always open to the student and the scholar, and is the source from which much modern history of Virginia, Kentucky, and Indiana has been drawn. The collection contains, how- ever, much valuable material concerning the history of the United States, and au interesting and important point of pilgrimage to all intelligent visitors to the city. Another important private library is the theological collection of Dr. James P. Boyce, which is quite as celebrated among students of theology as Colonel Durrett's is among lovers of history.
Some of the oldest towns in Kentucky were established near Louisville. Two of these, that had made history for themselves, have been swallowed up in the growth of the metropolis, and were long ago incorporated with the city. Shippingport, which was incorporated in 1785 as Campbelltown, is situated on the island below the falls, and contains most of the historic remains of Louisville. The first owner of the site of Shippingport was Colonel John Campbell, who sold it in 1803 to James Berthoud, a French emigre, one of quite a number of adventurous and enterprising Frenchmen who had settled about the falls, and who gave great impetus to business. Two others, who early became conspicuous and successful, were the Tarascons, who purchased the greater part of Shippingport in 1806. At the lower end of this island was the landing-place for boats, and, as the name would imply, the place became an important shipping point,
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being the head of lower navigation, as Louisville was the foot of upper navigation. The two towns were separated by a mile and a half of distance and an arm of the river, but, as up to 1831 (when the canal was opened), all the commerce around the falls in both directions was hauled from one town to the other, growth in both towns followed the track of commerce, and they gravitated toward each other.
Shippingport, under the enterprise of the thrifty French grew in importance, and at one time transacted a munch larger amount of business than did Louisville. The existence of great natural water-power marked it for the French as a place to be developed for mannfactures. In 1815 the Tarascons hegan the erection, at a cost of over $150,000, of an enormous merchant flouring-mill-an enterprise so extensive that even in this day of great manufacturing establishments it would compare well. The building, of stone and brick, with massive foundations and six stories, reaching to a height of 102 feet, still stands a monument to the solidity of early industry. The mill had a capacity of 500 barrels of flour per day. Its machinery, which had been imported at great cost, was the most perfect that could then be designed. The building itself was of the most advanced architecture of the period, and was so constructed that wagons could he driven under an arch and weigh and discharge grain at the rate of seventy-five bushels in ten minutes. The machinery was driven by water-power, and the mill-race had room for much additional power. The Tarascons experimented with the most improved machinery with the purpose of erecting cotton, fulling, and weaving-mills, but their intentions were too far in advance of the times, and resulted in failure.
The old mill stands, now converted into a cement mannfactory, still driven by water-power and contributing its capacity to one of the greatest industries in Louisville. It is a curious and interesting relic of the old times, and is
KENTUCKY INSTITUTE FOR THE BLIND.
fittingly surrounded by the monuments of the old French quarter. As early as 1819 Dr. McMurtrie, writing of the place, describes it as showing taste in the construction of the honses, "many of which are neatly built and ornamented with galleries, in which are displayed of a Sunday all the beauty of the town. It is in fact the Bois de Boulogne of Lonisville, being the resort of all classes on high days and holidays." Traces of all this remain in the weather-stained old honses with their balconies and antique doors and windows. The streets that were made three-quarters of a century ago are still as hard and level as at first. Ship- pingport is now hnt an election-precinct in one ward. It is the seat of a great cement industry, and the population is made up of laborers. One of its curiosities is the hotel once kept by Jim Porter, the Kentucky giant. Porter, who lived and died on the island, was remarkably small in early boyhood, so small, indeed, that he was employed as a jockey in the races that were run on the old track where Elm Tree Garden stood, a spot now given up to fields of waving corn at the upper end of the island. At fifteen he began to grow so rapidly that he began to measure himself every Saturday night. His ultimate height was seven feet nine inches, his weight 300 pounds. His rifle, eight feet long, his walking- cane, four and one-half feet long and weighing seven pounds, and his sword, five feet in length, were preserved in the house for years but have now fallen into the custody of the Polytechnic society. Charles Dickens, on his trip to this
D
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country, made a special visit to Porter, and spent several hours with the giant, of whom Prentice wrote on his death that "among his fellow-men he was a high-minded and honorable gentleman." The coffin containing the remains of Jim Porter is shown in the family vanlt at Cave Hill Cemetery. The outer casket is nine feet in length and proportionately broad.
On Third Street.
The Louisville and Portland canal, which was opened in 1831, was the cause of the decay of Shippingport. The falls of the Ohio which impede navigation are more correctly described as "an obstruction in the course of the river caused by a ledge of limestone rock running obliquely across its bed, with channels or chutes through the mass, produced or modified by the force of the water." The limestone rock which forms the bed of the river in front of the city and is the underlying stratum upon which Shippingport island is founded is nsed in immense quantities for the mann- `facture of water-lime or cement of a quality superior to any other made in America. 2 It is an earthy stone of a slightly bluish-green ashen tint, with an earthy flat conchoidal fracture. Its characteristic constituents have been determined to be : Lime, 28.29; magnesia, S.89 ; pure silica, 22.58 ; other insoluble silicates, 3.20; pot- ash, 0.32, The lime and silica are exactly in the proportion of their equivalents, to which is due the hydraulic properties of the cement rock. The rock is remark- able for the facility with which it cracks, splits, and disintegrates to calcareons mnd when exposed to the vicissitudes of the weather. After it is properly burned and ground, however, the lime and silica unite in connection with the water to form a hydrated silicate of lime which acts as a powerful cement to agglutinate the grains of sand added in mixed mortar, which is usually three times the bulk of the hy- draulic lime added. This cement was exclusively used in the building of the canal, and time has demonstrated that the cement has grown harder than the stone used.
The Louisville and Portland canal was the first great engineering work in the United States, and it is to-day full of interest. It was projected by the first settlers and was incorporated in 1825. Governor DeWitt Clinton, of New York, who as a Presidential quantity was advocating internal improvements in the way of canals, came to Louisville in 1826 to the ground-breaking. Taking off his coat and rolling np his sleeves, Governor Clinton filled a wheelbarrow with earth and trundled it off to the dumping ground. This important work, by which the difficulties of navigation past the falls of the Ohio are avoided, was begun under the joint auspices of the United States government and the State of Kentucky. By the charter authorizing the undertaking, the government subscribed for $100,000 dollars of stock ont of a total of $700,000 issued by the State. The canal was opened for business in the spring of 1831, having been "cted at a cost of $742,869.94. It has a length of 2.1 miles, a width of eighty feet along rectilinears, and of eigl bends. There are six locks, having dimensions of 400 x 80 feet, large enough to clear eiglit fee+ entire fall is only twenty-six feet. At first the toll charged was eighty cents per ton, which was soon reduced to fifty cents. Produce boats, carrying salt and iron, were charged three cents per foot, and this was subsequently made two cents per foot.
The government, to complete the work after the State's funds had been exhausted, subscribed for $133,500 addi- tional stock, and afterward received 567 shares as a dividend. Between 1831 and 1842 the United States received in dividends upon the business of the canal, $257,778, which returned to the government an aggregate, in cash and bonds, of $24,278 and 567 shares more than its original investment in the enterprise.
The canal eventually proved too small to accommodate all the craft on the Ohio, and the work of deepening and widening it was begun in 1860 under the superintendence of Major Godfrey Weitzel, of the United States Engineer Corps. The improvement was continued through the war up to 1866, when it ceased for lack of appropriations. In 1868 Congress voted $300,000 for resuming the abandoned work, and followed it by $300,000 more in 1869, and $300,000 in 1871, and gave $100,000 in 1873. Having thus expended such large sums, the next natural step was for the governi- ment to assume entire charge of the canal, which was accomplished in 1874 by the United States assuming the payment of outstanding bonds. From the date the transfer, all forms of toll charges were abolished, and to this fact the waning powers of river transportation owe what- ever vitality remains at the present time.
U'nder government anspices and direction, the task of completing the enlarge- ment of the canal has not only been carried to completion, but a new project is now under way to successful accomplishment by which a secure and ample har- bor will be afforded against the perils of moving ice, in the colder seasons, of those large fleets of coal tows that arrive from Pittsburgh with high stages of water. All the property is under responsible supervision by officers of the gov- ernment, and the canal proper, with the improvements projected, will long remain as sightly memorials of a paternal government devoted to the interests of interstate commerce.
The mouthi will be 375 feet wide and it will taper gradually like a funnel to the drawbridge at Eighteenth street, where the width of ninety feet is regular. The cost of the enlargement will be $1,500,000. At the mouth A Pretty " Queen Anne." of the canal is the great government wing dam, extending to the middle of the river. For half the year the top of the dam is out of water and affords a broad promenade which is utilized by fishermen and pleasure-seekers in large numbers. The force of the current over this dam and into the mouth of the canal is so great in good stages of water that a government life-saving station is maintained. Before this was established the men who commanded it saved many lives from philanthropy.
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Below the falls there is, under the hank of the river at the village of Clarksville, on the Indiana side, a strong whirlpool, through which steamers must pass, though it is done without danger. A trip over the falls on the steamers is an experience always enjoyed, and there are few packets passing that do not take a quota of sight-seers. For many years the falls pilot has been Captain Pink Varhle, whose name is known wherever there are adventurous travelers that have shot the falls of the Ohio.
The course of improvement in transportation has already paralleled the canal with a railroad. This is called the "Short Route," and is built upon au elevated steel trestle twenty-one feet above the grade of the streets. It commences at First street, and traverses the river frout to Portland, affording direct railway connection across the city, and serving as the roadway for suburban trains and the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway system.
The "Short Route" is an engineering marvel. Its lower end connects with the Kentucky and Indiana steel cantilever bridge. This beautiful structure, which cost a million and a half dollars, was begun in 1882 and completed in 1886. It crosses the river below the falls, connecting Portland and New Albany. Its length is 2,453 feet exclusive of the approaches, which on the Kentucky side are very picturesque and extensive. There are nine piers, seven of which are of limestone masonry, and two are cone-shaped iron cylinders, made of boiler-iron five-eighths of an inch thick, resting upon the hed-rock, and fitted with brick and concrete. The average height of the piers is 170 feet. The masonry of these piers is regarded by engineers as the most handsome and substantial ever placed in position for a bridge on the continent. The aggregate masonry contains 13,600 cubic yards of stone. The length of approaches on the Indiana side is 781 feet, and on the Kentucky side 3,990 feet. The bridge contains 2,414,261 pounds of steel and 3,625,000 pounds of wrought iron. It affords accommodation for railway, carriage, street car, and foot traffic.
The Louisville bridge, which was constructed in 1868-72, is 5,218 feet in length and cost $2,016,819. It contains twenty-seven spans, the one over the middle chute of the river being 370 feet long, and that over the Indiana chute 400 feet long. The bridge is ninety-six and one-half feet clear of low water. The piers are of limestone masonry and the superstructure of wrought iron. It is exclusively a railway and foot bridge.
During the three years from 1884 to 1887, the rapid increase in the number of railway lines entering Louisville and the vast amount of traffic handled resulted in the organization of a company for the construction of a third bridge
A PUBLIC AMUSEMENT AMPHITHEATRE.
across the Ohio, connecting the city of Jeffersonville directly with Louisville. Plans for this bridge have been prepared, and it is estimated to cost $1,500,000. It will provide for railway and horse-car traffic, carriage and foot ways. When that hridge is completed a belt railroad could encompass the three cities at the falls. In all probability the structure will be raised within the next five years.
The quarter of the city situated on the river front, being the oldest, is full of the quaintest and most interesting sug- gestion. There the houses are ancient and the population the densest. The streets have long ago lost their prestige. and the .nost historic buildings have fallen into decay and neglect. The concentration of the traffic and business of two hundred thousand people has long ago driven out of this quarter the people who once surrounded themselves with all that wealth and taste could procure. The river front itself is now occupied by railroad tracks, and there are accu- mulating the warehouses, roundhouses, and freight-sheds of a great transportation system.
Main street, the great wholesale and tobacco street of Louisville, being the first thoroughfare next to the river settle- ment, naturally contains many evidences of the original character of the city. Many of the business houses are old- fashioned, plain and small, while interspersed among these are some of the handsomest and most costly modern struct- ures. There are few streets where the unceasing traffic of heavy business may be seen in such volume as here. During the busy seasons the roar and noise of vans and wagons are deafening. Where Ninth street intersects, begins the "tobacco district," where are conducted the great sales, and where are situated the great warehouses, capable of handling 150,000 hogsheads annually. The scenes on the tohacco "breaks" on sale days is a novel one, and characteristic of the section and of the trade. There are several hundred resident and special huyers present, who make the rounds from one warehouse to the other "sampling " the hogsheads before hidding. The peculiar reasons for the growth of Louis- ville as a tobacco market have long ago heen pointed out. "All planters must be aware," wrote one historian of the trade, "that New Orleans hecame a leading market originally because it was the nearest eligible point to the mouth of the Mississippi river, and the only outlet from the West to a foreign market. The class of buyers, who probably more than all others give character to that market, were the agents of European governments, who monopolized the trade at
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home and virtually regulated prices in this country. They were wholesale buyers, wanting hundreds and thousands of hogsheads at a time, and to meet their views the individuality of the planter was lost sight of. The merchant arranged his samples in classes, putting the crops of many farmers in one round lot, which was sold at an agreed average price. After the sale he sub-classified the round lot and made a pro-rata apportionment of prices according to his judgment of the relative value of the several hogsheads, to say nothing of the difficulty of figuring out the several prices, so as to divide fairly all the funds received for the round lot, nor of the human nature in most men which would persuade the merchant that the larger shipper and most influential man was entitled to better prices than the ob- scure farmer, or unknown shippers ; granting that no errors were made in calculation, and that no interested motive prompted favorit- ism, still the relative valne of the tobacco was determined by one man. Now, admitting this merchaut to be competeut in such cases to divide equitably the last cent ; that he conld rise so far above the - promptings of selfishness as to do justice to all alike, and that his single judgment in the appor- . tionment of prices is worth as much as the com- bined judgments of fifty buyers in open compe- tition at an anction sale, yet there was at New Orleans only an export market. These remarks apply equally to New York, except that there is at New York a market for manufacturing leaf. But there is not, uor can there be in such a mar- ket, any competition over the single hogsbead."
The system prevailing in the Lonisville mar- ket is of daily auction sales for cash, in the opeu market, emphatically upon the merits of the Modern Tenements-Third Street. product. The active competition of hundreds of buyers assures the planters of more speedy and equitable returns for their crops, and this fact in connection with the changes in transportation, and the channels for distribution compulsively provided, had the result of making Louisville, as early as 1864, the largest primary leaf tobacco market in the world. Since that date large manufacturers North and East, as well as exporters, and manufact- nrers and dealers abroad, have either resideut agents aud buyers here, or are annually represented by buyers who spend as much time in Louisville as may be necessary to purchase supplies of the types of tobacco offered. Tobacco plauters iu Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, and Illinois, and, to a small extent, from other States, ship the article in hogs- heads to one or auother of the great warehouses here on cousignment for sale. Nearly every sale of tobacco is made at public auction. The sales are held daily at some or all of the warehouses, the hogheads being previously stripped, so as to expose the tobacco, but also inspected and sampled by a competent inspector, who is responsible for the quality as represented in the sample. All favoritism is necessarily excluded, and the owner of a single hogshead has an equal chance with the owner of a thousand. On these sales, when the owner of the tobacco thinks it is struck off at too low a price, he has the privilege of rejecting the bid, withdrawing the property or leaving it with the warehouse to be offered for sale again. Thus the offerings are annually some thousands of hogsheads greater than the actual sales.
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