The Nearly Forgotten History of Portland, Kentucky is the true story of the creation of the independent town below the falls of the Ohio that is now a resurgent neighborhood on the northwest end of Louisville.
This story begins with the geologic formation of the 350-million-year-old Devonian-Era fossil beds now known as the Falls, glimpses of its mysterious prehistory, and then we meet the Shawnee, who are there when Daniel Boone arrives. From there, Portland becomes the stepping-off point for Lewis & Clark and many adventurers after them. Because of its early prominence, the story of early Portland is a parade of famous names, from Henry Clay, John James Audubon, a young Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain.
But it is Portland’s residents — Jim Porter, the Batman brothers, Pink Varble, Gen. William “Bull” Nelson, and Mary Millicent Miller, America’s first female steamboat pilot — who make this story what it is: a page-turning narrative that reveals the history of Kentucky and Louisville from a new point-of-view: from the Lower Wharf of the Falls of the Ohio at Portland.
James Higdon is a native of Lebanon, Kentucky, where he was educated by the Sisters of Loretto. He holds degrees from Centre College, Brown University, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author of “The Cornbread Mafia,” and works as a freelance journalist with bylines in POLITICO Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, Esquire Magazine, and The Washington Post. He lives in Louisville.
As a writer of historical fiction, I literally lost sleep thinking of the possible stories that could be conjured from this fascinating history of Portland. From Charles Dickens and Abraham Lincoln to the Kentucky Giant and the country’s first female riverboat captain, the real life characters are ones never to be forgotten. Higdon hoisted a Louisville Slugger and knocked this one out of the park, and I can’t wait for the next installment!
James Markert, author of A White Wind Blew
The Nearly Forgotten History of Portland, Kentucky restores Portland to its rightful place as a key center of economic and social activity in the nineteenth century and the centuries leading up to it. Author Jim Higdon dove into dusty and overlooked corners of local history and has surfaced with a witty, sometimes rollicking, sometimes sobering account that offers surprising details about Native-American mound culture, the wharves where enslaved peoples were taken for sale downriver, Lincoln as a manual laborer, and the dramatic days of the Civil War—and much, much more between. You’ll finish wanting to read the sequel!
Emily Bingham, author of Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham
Part Kentucky tome, part American history, The Nearly Forgotten History of Portland, Kentucky is the untold story of Portland, Kentucky, one of America’s most-important early cities. Filled with names you learned in history class, such as Daniel Boone and Aaron Burr, and rife with conflict between tribes and early settlers, Higdon’s The Nearly Forgotten History of Portland, Kentucky effectively changes the modern narrative on the downtrodden metro area. Portland swells with a lineage comparative to New Orleans and other great American cities. All of Kentucky owes this author a great debt for sharing this brilliant history.
Fred Minnick, author of Bourbon: The Rise, Fall & Rebirth of An American Whiskey