History Of Morehead
Rowan County, the 104th county in order of formation, is located in the mountains of northeastern Kentucky. It is bounded by Fleming, Lewis, Carter, Elliott, Morgan, Menifee, and Bath counties and has an area of 282 square miles. Rowan County was formed from sections of Fleming and Morgan counties in 1856. The county was named for John ROWAN, who represented Kentucky in the U.S. House of Representatives (1807-09) and the U.S. Senate (1825-31). The county seat is MOREHEAD, the largest city in the county.
The topography of the county is hilly to mountainous. Most of the county is part of the Daniel Boone National Forest and has extensive hardwood forests. Only 32 percent of the county land is farmland; 35 percent is government-owned. Natural resources include timber, limestone, clay, and some coal. The principal water source is the Licking River and its impoundment, Cave Run Lake, which together form the county's southwestern border. Triplett Creek is the major tributary in the county.
It is believed that a party of surveyors from Pennsylvania, led by George William Thompson, first explored the area around Triplett Creek in the summer of 1773. The first settlers of the area came mostly from Virginia to claim land grants for service in the Revolutionary War. Many of these people settled in fertile valleys along the Licking River and Triplett Creek. One of the first communities to develop was Farmers, located in the western part of the county on the Licking River. It was settled by Maj. Jim Brain, who established a hotel at the junction of two roads. Clearfield, located just south of Morehead, was settled by Dixon Clack in the early nineteenth century and grew around his water-powered sawmill and store. Morehead was probably the third community to be established in the county and likewise grew around a sawmill, which was operated by Jake Wilson. It became the county seat when Rowan County was founded in 1856.
By the 1860s Rowan County was made up of a scattering of small communities. Corn was the dominant crop and timbering the major industry, with logs floated down Triplett Creek and the Licking River. During the Civil War, the residents of the county were often threatened with attack by guerrillas who, on March 21, 1864, burned the new county courthouse. On June 12, 1864, Gen. John Hunt Morgan's Confederate cavalry camped near Farmers.
Although stone, coal, and timber were the county's main resources, they were not exploited in great quantities until the Elizabethtown, Lexington & Big Sandy Railroad arrived in the county in the early 1880s. The town of Farmers expanded quickly and was the largest city in the county until most of the timber was depleted around 1900. Rodburn, Eadston, and Brady also grew as lumber towns situated on the railroad. Rockville and Bluestone developed as rock quarry centers.
To serve the mining and logging operations, several small railroads were built in Rowan County. The largest was the Morehead & North Fork Railroad (later abandoned), which by 1908 connected the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad at Morehead with Redwine in Morgan County. Numerous tributary spur lines extending from it moved products of the mills and mines to Morehead. Two other short lines in the county were the Kentucky Northern Railroad, which hauled logs from 1896 until its abandonment in 1900, and the Christy Creek Railroad, built by the General Refractories Company to haul clay from 1920 until 1948, when it was abandoned.
The Martin-Tolliver feud, known as the ROWAN COUNTY WAR, focused national attention on the county. After three years it ended in a bloody gun battle in Morehead on June 22, 1887. In an unsuccessful attempt to stop the fighting, the General Assembly took the unusual measure of proposing to dissolve Rowan County unless the feud stopped.
Prompted by donations from a former Confederate soldier, Morehead Normal School was founded in 1887 by Phoebe Button. In 1922 the school gained state support and in 1966 became known as Morehead State University. MOONLIGHT SCHOOLS were first established in Rowan County in 1911 to give night instruction to pupils of all ages. The founder, Cora Wilson Stewart, was credited with making great strides in the fight against illiteracy in the area.
As the timber resources in the county were exhausted, clay deposits were mined on a large scale. The town of Haldeman was founded five miles northeast of Morehead by L.P. Haldeman to accommodate workers of his Kentucky Firebrick Co., which opened before 1907. The plant closed during the Great Depression. Lee Clay Products, which purchased the assets of the Clearfield Lumber Company in 1925, produced clay sewer and chimney pipe until the 1970s.
By the 1950s, tobacco had replaced corn as the county's leading farm crop. Corn, hay, poultry, and cattle are also raised. When I-64 was completed through the somewhat isolated area in 1969, some industrial growth was experienced. In 1990 the leading employer in the county was Morehead State University. A boost to tourism was the 1974 impoundment of Cave Run Lake. The 8,200-acre lake is the largest in eastern Kentucky.
The population of Rowan County was 17,010 in 1970; 19,049 in 1980; and 20,353 in 1990.
From The Kentucky Encyclopedia, edited by John Kleber. Copyright 1992. Reprinted with permission of The University Press of Kentucky.