Maysville, Kentucky

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Excellent!

One of the best river towns on the 8-Ball Highway. I love Maysville!  This town is just great...check out those antebellum rows, and the high victorian redbrick splendor! 

 

Come back in the late fall and winter, to see how the town climbs the hills on narrow streets (one does see a bit of this on the later pix).

 

It took so long to reach the top of the bluffs that a second town developed up there, Washington, which has a collection of of old log houses (the original county seat of Mason County).

 

Maysville, back when it was called "Limestone", was a port-of-entry town to Lexington and Bluegrass during the frontier era.

 

Might pretty! Those are nifty streetlights.

 

Isn't Maysville a railroad town?

Lovely town.  When I drove through some of the residential areas of Maysville, though, it seemed pretty run down.  I wonder what the local economy is like.  Hopefully the locals appreciate the architecture that they have and continue working to preserve it.

That whole Maysville/Ripley area is neat.

Ooooh! I like, I like!!

Hells yeah.

That whole Maysville/Ripley area is neat.

 

Dont forget Augusta and that ferry and the mobile homes on stilts.

 

sn't Maysville a railroad town?

 

A railroad passes throught it, and it has Amtrak service (The Cardinal?), but town was more a river port and connection via trail and turnpike to the Bluegrass interior.  If one was travelling by steamboat it would have made sense to disembark at Maysville and then take a stage south to Lexington, as that would have been the direct route, before the arrival of the railroad.

 

There was a famous controversy (to US political history buffs) around the "Maysville Turnpike veto", where the Jacksonian Democrats where fighting the Whigs over federal funding of "internal improvements"....one of them being an improved turnpike from the Ohio at Maysville inland to Lexington.

 

Maysville was back in the day a big burley tobacco market, and the tobacco warehouses are still there, I think.  Ripley, across the river but further west, was too.  The burley variety was developed, I think, in southern Ohio.

 

Inland from Maysville and Augusta are two very interesting little county seat towns..Brookville and Mount Olivet.  They are set on top of ridges and follow the ridgelines, sort of an American version of the European hill town (I am probably over romanticising these places, but they are neat if one likes the rural and rustic picturesque).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The economy in the area sucks to be honest with you. Many people rely on factory jobs to make a living. A few years ago a company named TechnoTrim out of nowhere decided they were going to move to Mexico and hundreds if not thousands lost their jobs. There really isn't a big choice of jobs so most people commute to Lexington or Cincy.

I drove through there just today. The businesses along the AA seems to be thriving. Lots of restaurants along the AA on the southside of town including a Sonic's Drive-in. ;).