The South Fork of Licking River provides scenic fall paddling combined with good fishing for smallmouth bass and rock bass. Two floats on the river give paddlers an intimate sense of both the Inner and Outer Bluegrass regions of Kentucky.
By Lee McClellan, Kentucky Afield Outdoors
The pioneers settling along the verdant South Fork of Licking River in what is now Harrison County had a tenuous hold on their lands in 1780. The privations of carving crude civilization out of wilderness, the threat of attack by enraged Shawnee or their ilk, in addition to the whirlwind of the western theater of the Revolutionary War, all combined for a tough life.
A threat emanating from the north in the early summer of that year would eventually bring terror to this corner of the world. British Capt. Henry Bird and his Native American allies moved south from Detroit, crossed the Ohio River and moved into central Kentucky, via the Licking River system. A number of families, many...