Elkhorn: Evolution of a Kentucky Landscape

by Richard Taylor

When former Kentucky Poet Laureate Richard Taylor took a job at Kentucky State University in 1975, he purchased a fixer-upper―in need of a roof, a paint job, city water, and central heating―that became known to his friends as "Taylor's Folly." The historic Giltner-Holt House, which was built in 1859 and sits close by the Elkhorn Creek a few miles outside of Frankfort, became the poet's entrance into the area's history and culture, and the Elkhorn became a source of inspiration for his writing.

Driven by topophilia (love of place), Taylor focuses on the eight-mile stretch of the creek from the Forks of the Elkhorn to Knight's Bridge to provide a glimpse into the economic, social, and cultural transformation of Kentucky from wilderness to its current landscape. He explores both the natural history of the region and the formation of the Forks community. Taylor recounts the Elkhorn Valley's inhabitants from the earliest surveyors and settlers to artist Paul Sawyier, who memorably documented the creek in watercolors, oils, and pastels. Interspersed with photographs and illustrations―contemporary and historic―and intermixed with short vignettes about historical figures of the region, Evolution of a Kentucky Landscape delivers a history that is by turns a vibrant and meditative personal response to the creek and its many wonders.

Flowing across four counties in central Kentucky, Elkhorn Creek is the second largest tributary of the Kentucky River. Known for its beauty and recreational opportunities, Elkhorn Creek has become an increasingly popular location for canoeing, kayaking, and camping and is one of the state's best-known streams for smallmouth bass, bluegills, and crawfish. Like Walden Pond for Henry David Thoreau, the Elkhorn has been a touchstone for Taylor. A beautiful blend of creative storytelling and historical exploration of one of the state's beloved waterways, Elkhorn celebrates a gem in the heart of central Kentucky.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

312 pages, Hardcover

Published September 21, 2018

About the author

Richard Taylor is a professor of English and currently serves as Kenan Visiting Writer at Transylvania University. A former Kentucky poet laureate, he is the author of six collections of poetry, two novels, and several books of non-fiction, mostly relating to Kentucky history. A former dean and teacher in the Governor's Scholars Program, he was selected as Distinguished Professor at Kentucky State University in 1992. He has won two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Al Smith Creative Writing Award from the Kentucky Arts Council. He and his wife Lizz own Poor Richard's Books in Frankfort, Kentucky.

Reviews

[David Swartz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part DIY memoir-history-spiritual reflection about a little river that flows from Fayette County (a feeder creek called Town Branch flows underneath Lexington) to the Kentucky River (which eventually empties into the Ohio River) near the state capitol of Frankfort. The author is a literature professor at Transylvania (though he taught a longer stint at Kentucky State) and masterfully weaves geology, indigenous culture, natural history, and poetry into a rich tapestry. Locals will be especially interested in Paul Sawyier, the renowned painter who also spent a lot of time in Jessamine County. The book reminds me of William Least's *Heat-Moon’s PrairyErth: A Deep Map*, which is a mammoth 634-page microhistory of Chase County, Kansas (pop. 2,572).

Money quote: “What follows is an outline of the changes that have come with conversion of wildness to what passes as civilization to us—mown lawns, bands of asphalt, insecticides, monocultural fields of corn and soybeans, shopping malls, fertilizer run-off, invasive plants that most of us cannot identify unless they are as conspicuous as kudzu. We objectify nature into abstract notions, into flat platitudes, because we are unwilling to give it our attention. . . . Elkhorn is a portrait whose paint never dries—a short run of a small creek that never aspired to be a river. It is the sum of the lives it touched and touches—human, animal, botanical. Its organisms are countless, many invisible to the unaided eye. Someone once calculated that in the inventory of all creatures on the planet the average size is that of a housefly. Unlike a painted canvas on which strokes of the brush are illusions layered one-dimensionally across a stationary surface, I’ve tried to pry its shimmering lid to excavate a few connections between things as they were and are in space and time.”

[Jonathan Vaught · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! Enjoyed getting some background on a stretch of water I love to paddle.