102 BOONE CO. HIGH SCHOOL umented visit to Boone Co. was in 1739 by Charles Le Moyne, the second Baron de Longueuil, who was the commander of a French Canadian military expedition in the Mississippi River Valley. It was this expedition that gave credit to Longueuil for the formal discovery of Big Bone Lick. The Kentucky legislature established Boone Co. on December 13, 1798, by an act stating “that from and after the first day of June next . . . [there] shall be one distinct county, and called and known by the name of Boone.” Named in honor of Daniel Boone, Boone Co. officially became the 13th of Kentucky’s 120 counties on June 1, 1799. The total population in the county at the time was 1,500. The first permanent settlement in Boone Co. was Tanner’s Station, located on a high terrace above the Ohio River. It was founded in 1789 by John Tanner, a Baptist preacher from North Carolina. Renamed Petersburg in 1814, the settlement was established right on top of two separate prehistoric Fort Ancient American Indian village cultural sites. The site was chosen wisely by all those who settled there: Petersburg has never flooded, unlike many of the other Boone Co. river communities. Numbered among those who arrived during the pioneer settlement era in Boone Co. was a group of German Lutheran pioneers from Madison Co., Va., who settled in the east-central portion of the county in 1805. They established the Hopeful Lutheran Church as the centerpiece of their settlement. Other persons of German heritage followed and settled nearby in the present-day area of Florence. On June 17, 1799, the first Boone Co. court officially met in a private home. The justices, duly sworn in by the county sheriff, attended to their first order of business, to qualify and appoint a clerk and determine a location for the county seat of government and a place to hold court and erect public buildings. The currently unincorporated town of Burlington was chosen for the county seat. It was originally named Craig’s Camp; its name was later changed to Wilmington, and then in 1816 to Burlington. The first court house was a log structure built in 1801. A more stately and formal-looking seat of county government was built in 1817, replacing the first courthouse. After undergoing several renovations over the following 80 years, the 1817 courthouse was replaced by the 1889 structure, which is in use today and is affectionately known as “the Old Courthouse.” It is flanked by the newer Boone Co. Administration Building and the recently completed Federal-style Justice Center, while still holding on to its historic place of honor as the focal point of government in Boone Co. The Ohio River, as the main transportation corridor into the area, determined the settlement patterns of Boone Co. Families with all their possessions on a flatboat migrated downriver to their intended destinations. However, unintended destinations with unplanned and unexpected outcomes also account for some of Boone Co.’s pioneer population. Most of the early arrivals settled along the river and up its many tributaries, seeking out the most suitable sites for their subsistence
needs. Just as the American Indians had done before them, they looked for fertile cropland, water sources, plentiful game, and good hunting and fishing. They avoided unhealthy swampy ground and its accompanying miasma that was believed to cause the malarial symptoms of the ague. The desirable real estate on which to erect buildings was the high and dry land with good air circulation. Early pioneers also arrived in Boone Co. from the southern regions of Kentucky via the Cumberland Gap and the Wilderness Trail. Many of the early roads in the county were merely old buffalo traces or trails following creeks, rivers, and ridges, and contemporary roads throughout the county tend to follow the same routes. Boone Co.’s early settlers were generally yeoman farmers. They improved their land and raised enough crops to sustain their family; they also usually had some left over for sale or barter. Farm produce was transported to the river, where it was loaded onto flatboats and later steamboats or ferried across the river to the markets to the North awaiting it. Manufactured goods came to the settlements in reverse manner. Boone Co. remained predominately agricultural and rural for a century and a half; beginning before the Civil War, tobacco was the main cash crop sustaining the county’s farm families. Even commercial operations such as sawmills, gristmills, or blacksmith shops basically served the agricultural community. It was not until the mid-20th century that the focus in the county shifted from agriculture to manufacturing, industrial, and service-based businesses. The metamorphosis of the county’s economic base began during the 1940s with the opening of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and continued with the building of the major highway systems (I-75, I-71, and I-275), which started in the early 1960s. Florence Mall, opened in 1976, shifted the region’s commercial center to Boone Co., which also became home to many industries. During the Civil War, families in the county often held split allegiances. Boone Co. proudly claimed military leaders and enlistees in each of the two armies. There were, however, only two minor military skirmishes in the county, one in the town of Florence and one at Snow’s Pond in Walton. The Confederate general John Hunt Morgan’s escape route through Boone Co. from a federal penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio, has remained a very proud topic among county residents over the years, revealing that loyalties to the South were quite strong in the county. After the war, Boone Co. continued its agrarian tradition. Family farms and farming endeavors predominated, and tobacco continued to be the main cash crop. But when the automobile made transportation less time-consuming and more practical, people began to migrate from the farm to the city, for hourly-wage jobs and regular employment. The turn of the 20th century witnessed a larger percentage of Boone Countians finding their employment outside the family farm, and there was a resulting loss of next-generation farmers. Until the Great Depression, the elders continued
the agricultural tradition as long as they were physically able. But by the 1930s , poverty and a subsistence strategy prevailed. Those who could do so depended on the farm for a livelihood. Others took advantage of the various New Deal opportunities and social programs in order to get by. At the onset of World War II, the rural landscape changed forever. The men went to war and the women went to work in factories for the war effort. The exodus from the family farm began and was never reversed. The second half of the 20th century continued in this vein as Boone Co. became less and less agricultural. Today, only a handful of family farms are operating in the county, and the tobacco settlement to end tobacco production is threatening the existence of the part-time farmers. The only lucrative return on farmers’ land now is gained by selling it to developers. Every day, Boone Co. farms are purchased, subdivided, and developed. That is why Boone Co.’s current claim to fame is its status as one of the two fastest-growing counties in the state, in terms of population. In 2000 Boone Co. had a population of 85,991; in 2006 the population was estimated at 110,080, making it the secondmost-populous county in Northern Kentucky. Boone Co. Historic Preservation Review Board. Historic Structures of Boone County, Kentucky. Burlington, Ky.: Boone Co. Historic Preservation Review Board, 2002. U.S. Census Bureau. www.census.gov/ (accessed December 31, 2007). Warner, Jennifer S. Boone County: From Mastodons to the Millennium. Burlington, Ky.: Boone Co. Bicentennial Book Committee, 1998.
Don Clare
BOONE CO. HIGH SCHOOL. The campus of Boone Co. High School (BCHS) in Florence was constructed in 1954 along Ky. Rt. 18, the Burlington Pk., to consolidate the districts of Hebron High School, Burlington High School, New Haven High School, and Florence High School. The mascot selected by the first senior class at BCHS was Rebels, from the movie Rebel without a Cause, starring James Dean. The 1980s and 1990s were significant years for the school’s student body, as they became competitive and recognized across the state for their developing athletic teams, for their outstanding bands, and for exceeding state and national test scores. The school was also noted for producing numerous Commonwealth Diploma recipients (24 in one year); for advanced programs in calculus, Spanish, French, history, chemistry, and English; and for a professional staff who exhibited pride and loyalty toward their school. BCHS has produced three professional football players. Irv Goode (1958) played for the St. Louis Cardinals and the Super Bowl champion Miami Dolphins; John Shannon (1983) was a University of Kentucky lineman who played for the Super Bowl champion Chicago Bears and the San Francisco 49ers; and All-Pro Most Valuable Player Shaun Alexander (1996) was University of Alabama All-American running back, currently plays