River Town

In the early days of the country the Cumberland river was a major route for transporting people and goods into many areas in Kentucky and Tennessee. Flat bottomed paddlewheel steam boats could travel as far up river as Burnside Kentucky. Many communities grew up around the docks where the boats stopped to load and unload people and goods. The Cumberland was a wild river before the TVA constructed the Wolf Creek Dam in the late forties, and in the spring much of the bottomlands would flood, so the communities would often be constructed a distance from the river above these flood planes. One such community was Creelsboro Kentucky, the busiest riverport on the Cumberland between Nashville Tennessee and Burnside Kentucky during the 19th century. It was never a large town, but offered a church, post office, school, bank, stores and a hotel/restaurant/store combination where riverboat passengers could find lodging for the night. A little over four years ago I took this picture of the old hotel. There is now a bare lot where this historic structure once stood. Today Creelsboro is a ghost town in the sense there are a few residents but no businesses that would qualify it as a town.