History
Following the Revolutionary War, many veterans staked claims along the Green River as payment for their military service. The river valley also attracted a number of ne'er-do-wells, earning it the dubious nickname Rogue's Harbor.
In 1842, the Green River was canalized, with a series of locks and dams being built to create a navigable channel as far inland as Bowling Green, Kentucky. Four locks and dams were constructed on the Green River, and one lock and dam was built on the Barren River, a tributary that passed through Bowling Green.
During the American Civil War, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan conducted daring raids through the Green River country, from which he reached into southern Indiana and Ohio.
In 1901, two additional locks and dams were opened on the Green River, which allowed river traffic to Mammoth Cave. In 1941, Mammoth Cave National Park was established, and the two upper locks and dams closed in 1950. In 1965, Lock and Dam #4 at Woodbury failed; this was the dam that locked both the Green and Barren rivers.
In 1969, the United States Army Corps of Engineers impounded a section of the river, forming 8,200-acre (33 km2) Green River Lake. The lake is now the primary feature of Green River Lake State Park.
There is still one Indian tribe living on the Green River: the Southern Cherokee Nation of Kentucky. In 1983 Governor John Y. Brown, Jr. recognized the Southern Cherokee Nation as an Indian tribe.
Read more about this topic: Green River (Kentucky)
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“The principle office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–117)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)