Beech Tree News Network

 “I think first of all you have to take into consideration what Woodbury is. It is just a really beautiful place, and it attracted people as far back as seven or eight thousand years ago,” states local author and historian Roger Givens.
Givens explained that there is evidence of tenancy in Woodbury that experts believe dates back thousands of years. “We know they were attracted to the site in Woodbury because there is a huge mound of mussel shells on the river below the dam.”
 “There are still Universities that come to study them every summer. They have not done actual excavation at the mounds in Woodbury. The mounds they are primarily focused on are the [Carlston] Annis Mounds located in the Logansport area… they are learning that was a much larger settlement than they originally thought.  Until recently it was believed it was just a popular camping site for Native Americans. They have learned that there was an actual village there that was big enough to have a fort-like stockade… The one at Woodbury was dated at close to three thousand years old.”
While early visitors to the area left petroglyphs and shell middens,  the beginnings of Woodbury as it is known today would wait until the early 1800’s.
“The first white people coming there probably came in around 1800,” stated Givens. “Since 1805, there had been record of flatboat travel on the river coming out of Greensburg, KY and entering the port of New Orleans as early as 1805, so they knew the river had some importance.”
These boats were nothing like steamboats: they were large, flat bottomed boats with shallow drafts meant to navigate questionable water made from local timber. “When they got to New Orleans, they didn’t try to bring the boat back. They just tore them apart and sold the lumber and walked back the Nachez trace,” stated Givens. Near this time, Thomas Wand was taking some of the first steps to establishing Woodbury as a hub for trade. 
“Thomas Wand – or William Wand, we think he is one and the same… Thomas Wand applied for and got permission to build a mill dam there and mill in 1806,” stated Givens. “The state realized the importance of navigation on Green River. In 1808 they passed a regulation requiring people who lived along the river to clean the river of obstacles to navigation like trees and snags. They divided the river into districts and the landowners along the river could hire people within their district to help them clean up. They paid around 70 cents a day… a lot of this work was done by slave labor. The people living along the river who had slaves would rent their slaves to landowners along the river to clean the river. By 1811, that work was complete. They declared it navigable in high water all the way to Liberty in Casey County. They also declared going up the mud river navigable at the same time.”
 “Somewhere around 1821 was the first steamboat that went all the way to Bowling Green in high water. There were just one or two [steamboats] per year for the next several years. The state realized if they improved navigation on the Green River it would be great for the economy of the state. In 1828, they hired the Corps of Engineers to do a study to determine if it would be feasible to build locks and dams on the Green and Kentucky Rivers. They determined it would be. By 1836 the state legislature authorized the building of four locks and dams on the Green and one on the Barren to make year round navigation possible all the way up to Bowling Green. “

The first and second Locks opened for barge traffic in 1840. The availability of transport allowed the export of good such as lumber, coal and crops and import of goods. While Butler County had been developing slowly compared to its more accessible neighbors, river traffic precipitated a population boom.
“Then, as you do now, there were people with an entrepreneurial vision. At the beginning of the thought of a lock and dam, men by the names of Thomas D. Carson and George R Hines bought the [Woodbury] property from Wand – they bought 250 acres. They had laid out the town of Woodbury. The first boat to run from Evansville through the Lock and Dam system was in 1841, so the system was completed by then. Carson and Hines were very good promoters of the town of Woodbury. The town was officially established in 1852 and by 1860 it was the largest town in the county. This was not extremely large: only about 200 people.”
Givens attributes this rapid expansion to several factors, including the sale of a blacksmith shop to Givens’ great great great grandfather, Timothy Hampton. “While lots around him in Woodbury were selling for between $25-100, Timothy was able to purchase his lot for fifty cents…during that time, having a blacksmith shop was very important.”
“ [During this time,] Morgantown hadn’t grown since its beginning, really. It didn’t exist till 1813. In 1820 it was less than 100 people all the way to the 1850’s it remained not much more than 100 people – I think because it was so high up on the bluff, away from the river. It wasn’t as accessible as Woodbury. Woodbury started to boom. The old Finney Hotel that is standing there was originally built as a tavern. There were three hotels in Woodbury by the 1860’s and 1870’s. There were two banks established in the 1890’s.”

Givens also detailed the addition of business such as two meat packing plants, tobacco warehouses,  a large mill beside the lock and dam, photographers, 2 banks, a saddler  and  three story structure with a saw mill, grist mill, and a wool carding mill, all of which were added in the later half of the 1800’s.
“At that time, the river was really in its heyday. From the 1880’s up until about 1931, is when the last steamboat ran. The federal government established their headquarters,  U.S. Corps of Engineers HQ at Woodbury. That is where the [Green River] Museum is today.  The first building there is the office building for the Corps of Engineers. They operated five dredge boats and repair boats. They maintained the whole lock and dam system from Evansville to Bowling Green. It was all operated out of Woodbury.“
However, a new form of transportation would slow traffic coming through the nation’s waterways. “Railroads kind of did the riverboat industry in,” stated Givens. “Following the Civil War, the nation realized the importance of railroad in transporting troops and materials during the Civil War, so they started expanding greatly. They needed railroad ties and Butler County was still primarily a wooded, virgin timber county. They started shipping railroad ties out and Green River gave them the means to do it, to get their ties and supplies to market. “

“River traffic began to slow down and in about 1927 the Corps of Engineers decided that there wasn’t enough traffic to justify the office at Woodbury so they combined that at first with the Corps of Engineers Office in Paducah, the Barren and the Green River would have been maintained out of that office. I believe that lasted only a few years before they moved it to the Louisville Corps of Engineers district and it remains there today. In 1927, they closed the office at Woodbury. The last two steamboats that ran were the Bowling Green and Evansville were the last scheduled, they made trips to Evansville from Bowling Green and back. They had these regular stops, they unloaded and picked up goods. The Bowling Green burned in 1920 in South Carrolton. The owners saw that river traffic was on the decline and they knew it would never be replaced. They still ran the Evansville up until it burned at Bowling Green in July 25, 1931. That was the last of the steamboat era. “

Roger G. Givens is an amateur historian and former co-publisher of the Butler County Banner newspaper, where he wrote weekly articles about Butler County’s historical events, people and places. Givens has written a feature article about Butler County for the magazine Back Home in Kentucky. He is co-author with Nancy Richey of “Images of America, Butler County” by Arcadia Publishing. Givens’ most recent book is “African American Life in Butler County, Kentucky – Black Culture, Contributions, and Community”. Givens has given several talks about the Civil War in Butler County and wrote a 200th Anniversary saga and historical booklet of the Mt. Vernon Baptist Church in Butler County. He is retired but stays active serving on the Morgantown/Butler County Chamber of Commerce, Board of Directors, Green River Museum, Board of Directors, Kentucky Historical Highway Marker, county chairperson and is Vice President of the Charles Duncan Chapter, Sons of the American Revolution in Bowling Green. He plans to release a third book in the near future.