Town Branch Trail

“The town layout was not to be oriented to the compass, but rather aligned to the Town Fork of Elkhorn Creek, whose course became the site of an elongated common ten poles (165′) wide. Lots were arranged on a grid in three rows, one on the rise south of the stream, extending to Hill (High) Street, and two on the more level north side divided by Main Street and bounded by Short Street.”

—1781 Lexington Town Plan.1

“This stream flows unseen beneath the streets of the city now and with scarce current enough to wash out its grim channels; but then it flashed broad and clear through the long valley which formed the town common, – a valley of scattered houses with orchards and corn fields and patches of cane.”

— James Lane Allen story, “James Gray,” in which the hero relates the tale of the Battle of Blue Licks while on the bank of the Town Fork.2

“They beheld a land of bewildering beauty; a land of running waters, of groves and glades and prairies and canebrakes; a land teeming with game, great herds of shaggy-maned buffalo, the lordly elk, the deer, the bear, and the panther, flocks of wild geese and turkeys and paroquettes—a land literally flowing with milk and honey.”

— Maude Lafferty’s description of Town Branch as seen by settlers in 1775.3

1 Clay Lancaster, Vestiges of the Venerable City, a Chronicle of Lexington, Kentucky (Lexington, KY: Lexington-Fayette County Historic Commission, 1978), 9.

2 James Lane Allen, “John Gray” (Lippincott’s Magazine, June 1892) in Wilson,Samuel M., ed. “Sesqui-Centennial Symposium: A symposium of tribute to Lexington on the occasion of the sesquicentennial anniversary of its birth” (Lexington, KY: 1925), 37.

3 Maude Lafferty, The Town Branch. 1917, p. 2.

Historic stone fences are a unique and distinctive feature of the Bluegrass landscape. An example of these fences can be seen at the former landfill on Old Frankfort Pike. In addition to stone fences, the Town Branch Trail will highlight other dry stone structures, retaining walls, which can be found along the Town Branch to maintain the stream banks and channel the water. British and Scotch-Irish craftsmen supervised much of the dry stone construction during the 1800s.

Dry stone structures do not depend on mortar to hold retaining walls or fences together. Instead, they rely on the skill of the craftsmen to shape and place individual stones as well as the forces of gravity and frictional resistance. Mortared walls generally have a shorter life span than dry stone walls because frozen rain and snow get trapped in mortared seams and push the joints apart. Due to construction techniques, dry stone retaining walls and fences can drain naturally without damage. Remarkably, as a dry stone structure settles over time, it actually becomes stronger. The dry stone retaining walls found along Town Branch have been exceptionally durable and have functioned well for up to two centuries and counting.

References:

Alvey, R. G. Kentucky Bluegrass Country. pp. 37-47. 1992.
Dry Stone Conservancy. www.drystoneusa.org

• The Disappearance of Town Branch

by Zina Merkin, November 2001

Many mid-western cities are laid out on a grid oriented to the four principal directions. Lexington’s grid, and its designations of North Limestone and East Main Street are curiously askew from those compass directions. The city originally was oriented along the banks of the Middle Fork of the Elkhorn, also known as Town Fork or Town Branch. But this stream along which the town initially was laid out is now nowhere to be seen. This paper sets out to track the vanishing of Town Branch, the reasons for its disappearance, and its influence on the development of the city of Lexington, linking this particular history with issues in the settlement and development of the United States in general.

While the stream in the earliest years may have been a pretty little creek, it quickly took on an urban character. Water supply was derived from springs, and later, wells, while the creek supported early industry. Tracking the fortunes of Town Branch offers an interesting window on the development of various kinds of urban infrastructure, and a reflection of Lexington’s growth, its changing economic base, and local effects of landscape changes occurring on a national level.

Click this link to open the “The Disappearance of Town Branch” in PDF format (100 kilobytes).