Historical Markers for Hardin County Civil War Trail in Final
Stages
By
FORREST BERKSHIRE
Staff
Writer News-Enterprise
Elizabethtown,
Ky.
Final editing is under way of the interpretive markers that
will tell
part of Hardin County's role
in the Civil War.
The markers will link the county to the rest of the 2nd
Congressional
District that will follow
Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan's 1862 Christmas
Raid through the territory
that resulted in the destruction of the train
trestle at Muldraugh Hill.
Hardin County will have markers in seven locations, including
some
erected by the Sons of
Confederate Veterans on the hill in Elizabethtown's
City Cemetery overlooking
downtown.
Organizers hope to have three markers in downtown
Elizabethtown, one on
Public Square, where a
cannonball from the raid is still embedded in a
building, one near the
Lincoln-Haycraft Bridge, where Morgan's men tried to
cross, and one near the Duff
Insurance building, where several Union
soldiers were killed during
the siege on the town.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans are erecting markers near the
cannon in
the cemetery that will tell
about the Dec. 27, 1862, battle.
A marker will be placed in Upton, where Morgan sabotaged the
tracks of
the L&N Railroad before
he attacked Elizabethtown and another near Fort
Sands near Muldraugh Hill,
where they destroyed the train trestle and
disrupted supplies to the
southern Union Army for about three months. One
other marker is planned near
where U.S. 62 crosses the Rolling Fork River,
where Morgan's raiders
crossed.
"Many of these take you into areas that are quite
forsaken," said Tim
Asher, one of the organizers
of the Hardin County portion of the trail.
He said heritage tourists will go where the troops went and in
many
places will be able to stop
and see what the Civil War commanders saw in
1862.
"In many areas, the landscape hasn't changed," he
said.
Asher said the trestles at Muldraugh Hill were one of the
primary
objectives of the raid that
took Morgan on to Bardstown before his route
turned south again.
"This county has a remarkable history," local
historian Mary Jo Jones
said. "But we've been
lax in telling it."
Jones said the drive to get the story out and preserve what is
left of
the historical evidence has
gained momentum over the past several years.
She said she hopes the markers will direct people toward the
Hardin
County History Museum when
it opens this summer. She said people can learn
the rest of the history
there and about many of the nationally famous
historic figures who are
part of Elizabethtown's history. Some of those
people include Davy Crockett
and William Clark of the Lewis and Clark
expedition.
"We need to be telling all of these stories," she
said.
Organizers hope to have the signs installed on the trail by the
fall,
and that tourists will
follow the trail up from Tennessee.
Forrest Berkshire can be reached at 769-1200, Ext. 240, or e-mail
him