Murray Ledger & Times Monday, August 5, 2002
LOUISVILLE, Ky (AP)--State and economic development officials, Civil War buffs, university professors and local officials are working together to map out driving trails for tourists that promote Kentucky's role in the Civil War.
The idea is for motorists to follow marked highway routs to historic sites, stopping along the way to see displays about local skirmishes and take tours of places that became important during the conflict.
Sites along the three proposed trails include Fort Heiman, a Confederate outpost that fell to then-Brig. Gen. Ulysses Grant in 1862, and Octagon Hall, an eight-sided antebellum estate in Simpson County that served as a shelter for Confederate troops. Officials hope at least one trail will be ready by spring.
Kentucky officials don't have an estimate on how many visitors the trails might draw, but they see the approach as a package giving tourists a variety of places to visit.
"If we can make it that much easier for the visitor, I think it does increase not only tourists to the state, but it increases the level of satisfaction to those who come to the state," said Carole Summers, cultural heritage tourism coordinator for the Kentucky Department of Travel. "They have a better visit."
Kentucky never seceded from the Union, but as a border state its loyalties were divided. Both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, were natives of the state, and Union and Confederate forces battled for strategic points here until the war ended.
The three planned Kentucky trails are:
*The Cumberland Valley Trail, which will tell the importance that transportation routes played in the war. Trail sites include Octagon Hall, Camp Nicholas and a burial site of executed Confederate prisoners in Simpson County; Dumont Hill, an encampment at Allen Springs and guerrilla activity sites in Allen County; and Fort Webb, Riverview and Fort Albert Sidney Johnson in Warren County.
The Cumberland trail system runs along U.S. 31W in Warren and Simpson counties, Ky. 231 in Warren and Allen counties and Ky. 100 from Simpson County through Allen County. The trail also dips into six Tennessee communities.
*The John Hunt Morgan Trail, named for the Alabama-born cavalry leader whose raids reached the outskirts of Cincinnati. The trail will include links to Morgan trails in Tennessee, Indiana and Ohio.
The Morgan trail will show "the flow or the movement of that campaign as it was conceived by Gen. John Hunt Morgan, and actually what happened on that march," said Thomas Fugate, Civil War sites preservation coordinator for the Kentucky Heritage Council. The trail is a work in progress that includes sites in 16 counties and carves a north-south path down the middle of Kentucky.
*The Fort Heiman Trail in Calloway County. Fort Heiman is where the Union supply vessel Mazeppa, sunk by Confederate cavalry in 1864, sits on the bottom of the Tennessee River. Fort Heiman visitors can also see the remains of Fort Henry, on land partially submerged across the river, and it is near Fort Donelson in Tennessee.
The three forts guarded the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, cutting of river movement of Union soldiers and supplies until February 1862, when Grant-led Army-Navy join operation captured them.
The development costs, and estimated completion times, vary for the trail projects. The Morgan trail is expected to cost $231,700 and will be completed within six to nine months; the Cumberland Valley Trail will cost $48,680 and will be finished within six months after the project gets a state grant, which is blocked until the legislature passes a budget; and the Fort Heiman Trail will cost $750,000 and will be completed in the next two years. Plans call for Fort Heiman to become a part of the National Parks system.
The trails will take motorists down historic paths that run along federal, state and county roads. Along the way, signs will direct visitors to roadside exhibits featuring maps, brochures and other displays to help people understand the sites in a historic context.
Below is the text and scans of the Saturday, June 15, 2002 Murray Ledger & Times newspaper article providing information about the federal land grant awarded to Calloway County towards the purchase of Fort Heiman.
Click on the thumbnails to see the full images.
City, County get funding for Miller Annex, Fort Heiman
By Edward Sheridan
Staff Writer
The four-day span of June 11 through June 14 may go down as one of the most propserous times in Calloway County history.
Just three days after welcoming the Pella Corporation and its new jobs to the local community, two grants administered through the Kentucky Department of Local Government were delivered to Murray Friday that will aid local preservation efforts.
A $60,000 federal land and water conservation grant was presented that will enable the Calloway County Fiscal Court to apply for additional funding to go toward the purchase of land where Civil War site Fort Heiman once stood. An additional $500,000 community development block grant from the department of local government was presented to the Murray Main Street program which will allow for the renovation of the Miller Courthouse Annex.
"This has been a great week for Murray and Calloway County and the entire region," state Sen. Bob Jackson (D-Murray) said during a check presentation ceremony held Friday afternoon on the steps of the courthouse annex.
Department of Local Government Commissioner and Calloway native Jody Lassiter added additional good news by announcing that the Fort Heiman project would not only receive the $60,000, but would also be eligible to add another $15,000 onto the grant total if efforts to preserve went above the original grant total.
"The $60,000 is going to be the first step to purchase the most important part of Fort Heiman," he said. "Before it's all done, Calloway County is going to have the second national park in Kentucky, as (Fort Heiman) becomes part of the Fort Donelson system."
According to Steve Zea, president of the West Kentucky Corporation, the entire $60,000--or $75,000--will be used to provide matching monies for a larger TEA 21 grant that, if approved, will be used to purchase the property. News on that grant could come within the next 30 days.
"They want to see an effort of other money," Zea said. "We're going to have to use this money to match the other money."
Whatever monies are acquired will be used to purchase the portions of Fort Heiman that are in the most danger of succumbing to commercial development. Much of the fort is currently under private ownership.
Additional federal monies for Fort Heiman could be on the way if it is included on the list of sites under consideration for the Vicksburg Train. U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) said during the ceremony that there is currently a technical corrections bill pending in Congress that would place Fort Heiman on that list.
Note: all portions of the article relevant to Fort Heiman end here. The remainder of the article deals with the grant to renovate the Murray Couthouse Annex.
Image Caption: Jody Lassiter DLG Commissioner
Image Caption: MORE MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS...From left, Commissioner for the Department for Local Government Jody Lassiter, Senator Bob Jackson, Sandy Forrest, Calloway County Judge Executive Larry Elkins and Murray Mayor Freed Curd display a check for $500,000 for community development and preservations projects for Murray and Calloway County and a check for $60,000 for the Fort Heiman Civil War Preservation. Lassiter, representing Paul Patton's office, presented the checks during a ceremony Friday afternoon.
Special Note: Paul Patton was governor of Kentucky at the time and the ceremony was Friday, June 14, 2002.
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