Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Kentucky
John Filson first brought the frontier hero to notice, giving him fine words that made him the idol of the romanticists
THE FOUNDER, BELIEVING HIS RACE A FAILURE, TOOK HIS OWN LIFE. BUT HIS CONTEST SURVIVED HIM, ENDURING SEVERAL BRUSHES WITH EXTINCTION TO BECOME AMERICA’S LONGEST-RUNNING SPORTS TRADITION. IT TURNS 125 THIS SPRING.
There was a miraculous and all-conquering horse, a filly, not a colt, who in nine out of ten races broke or equaled speed records that had stood for years and decades, who in fire and presence and appearance was Black Beauty personified, and was, the author of Read more >>
A small but dependable pleasure of travel is encountering such blazons of civic pride as “Welcome to the City of Cheese, Chairs, Children, and Churches!”
Stephen Vincent Benét confessed that he had fallen in love with American placenames, and George R. Read more >>
She lived only six years, but it was a history-packed career
Old rivermen used to talk of the first time the steamboat Yellow Stone reached the fur-trading posts on the upper Missouri. Read more >>
In the early years of this century, when an American scholar, James Schouler, could still define history as the record of “consecutive public events,” it would have been inconceivable for the American contribution to the world’s varieties of distilled spirits Read more >>
The Kentucky rifle, which because of its astonishing accuracy earned. A substantial credit for American victories in both the Revolution and the War of 1812, was unknown by that name until after the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Read more >>
A few dazzling words about that emerging metropolis, delivered in 1871 by Congressman J. Proctor Knott. Edited for 1971 visitors by David G. McCullough
Concerning the long life, fast times, and astonishing fecundity of Man o’ War
In 1920 William T. Waggoner of Fort Worth, Texas, possessed a string of racehorses, hundreds of thousands of acres of prime cattle land dotted with oil wells, and the firm conviction, apparently born of experience, that everything has a price. Read more >>
Alone in his empty mansion, the venerable Cassius Clay took unto himself a scandalously youthful bride; when the posse came for him, they met more than their match
Shocking, exuberant, exalted, the camp meeting answered the pioneers' demand for religion and helped shape the character of the West.