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attractions
From the early days of Hodgen’s early 1900s brought many chang-
Mill to Hodgenville, 2018 marks es to LaRue County including the
Hodgenville’s bicentennial as well as Elizabethtown and Hodgenville
LaRue County’s 175th anniversary Railroad, two colleges, electricity,
First explored in the 1780s, the the telephone—and a renewed inter-
initial settlement in LaRue County est in Abraham Lincoln.
was centered around Robert In 1909, the centennial of
Hodgen’s Mill. In 1818, two years Lincoln’s birth, the city erected
after Abraham Lincoln’s family a statue of the 16th president on
moved from Knob Creek to Indiana, the public square and started con-
residents from the area petitioned to struction on the Lincoln Memorial
found a new city and on February building at the Sinking Spring Farm.
9, 1818 the city of Hodgenville was Over the decades, five presidents
established on twenty-seven acres of have visited the Lincoln Memorial
land donated by the Hodgen family. including Theodore Roosevelt,
As the town prospered, people began William H. Taft, Woodrow Wilson,
saying Hodgenville should have its Franklin H. Roosevelt and Dwight
own county, so on February 18, 1843, D. Eisenhower.
the Kentucky state legislature formed The beginning of the 20th
its 98th county and named it LaRue. century also brought tragedy to
Over time, nearby communities Hodgenville as a 1914 fire destroyed
formed in Buffalo, Magnolia and the downtown district and large
Athertonville, where John Atherton’s area of the city had to be rebuilt. In
distilleries provided hundreds of the 1930s, LaRue County struggled
Credit: NPS jobs until Prohibition shuttered along with farming communities
them in 1920. The late 1800s and across the country during the Great
Above left: The LaRue County
Courthouse was decorated
for the arrival of President
Theodore Roosevelt on Feb.
12, 1909. The structure later
burned during the Civil War in
1865.
Right: One of the first trains
steams in on the the Elizabeth-
town and Hodgenville Railroad,
established in 1888.
Photo courtesy of the Sherrill Williams
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