Travel Archives

September 7, 2015

Mayfield’s Wooldridge Monuments

These photos of the Wooldridge Monuments in Mayfield, Ky., were taken October 19, 2008, a date which will become important later on.

The RoadsideAmerica website quotes the Mayfield Monitor’s obituary as calling Col. Henry G. Wooldridge “a very eccentric man.” The horse breeder, who never married, spent most of his 77 years living with relatives. Before he died in 1899, he commissioned what is now called the Woodridge Monuments, a collection of 18 life-sized statues of humans and animals, including a horse named Fop and two dogs named Tow Head and Bob.

He’s the only one buried there

Despite all the statues, Wooldridge is the only person buried in the 17 x 33-foot plot.

A City of Mayfield website lists the human statues as belonging to his mother, Keziah, his brothers, Alfred, W.F., John, and Josiah. Also included are his sisters, Susan Neely, Narcissa Berryman, Minerva Nichols, plus his two nieces, Maud Reeds and Minnie Neely.

There is a story that the statue of Minnie, is Henry’s childhood love who died in a riding accident. However, family records prove that Minnie was actually one of the Colonel’s great-nieces.

Tree destroyed the monuments

I mentioned that the fact that I shot these photos in 2008 was important. It’s because an ice storm toppled a tree on the monuments in 2009, smashing all the stones except for the three women in the back row. My pictures show the original statues.

Things looked bleak for one of the area’s biggest tourist attraction until federal disaster money was made available to help out hard-hit Kentucky. The funds covered most of the $100,000 it took to restore the monuments. (Col. Wooldridge supposedly paid only $6,000 to have them built.)

Wooldridge had drunk escort

The city’s website reports, “According to folklore, the Illinois Central Railroad supplied a special flatcar with “new-type air brakes” to transport from Paducah, Ky., to Mayfield the large statue of Col. Wooldridge astride his horse.

It was told that Mayfield’s “town drunk” happened to be in Paducah when the flatcar left for Maplewood Cemetery. The story goes that he climbed aboard the horse and rode behind Col. Wooldridge’s statue to enter Mayfield in grand style.

Click on the photos to make them larger.

August 27, 2015

Hurricane Erika – Stay or Go?

I wasn’t much concerned about Hurricane Danny. Every model predicted unfavorable conditions that would inhibit development. Hurricane Erika had a bad feel about it, though. She was following Danny like a girl hoping be noticed at prom time.

I particularly didn’t like Wednesday’s 11 A.M. track that showed the center of the cone knocking on our back door. The only problem was that different models said it would dissipate before it got to us, would swerve north to spin fish in the middle of the Atlantic or would come out of the Bahamas as a piddling Cat 1 storm, with the potential of cranking up to a Cat 2.

Before you dismiss my “piddling” Cat 1 hurricane, imagine yourself in the back of a pickup truck going 75 miles per hour. Now imagine yourself trying to hold up a 4×8 sheet of plywood while being blasted by a firehose.

Wife Lila and Kid Matt have been trying to talk me out of coming home. They both subscribed to the No Big Deal models, and Matt said he’d put up the storm panels if I wasn’t there.

This looks a little better

The model spaghetti is beginning to favor a northward turn before it gets to the coast of Florida. The state will probably get some much-needed rain, but be spared high winds. If the 11 A.M. Thursday advisory keeps the turn, looks like Cape is going to have to put up with me a little longer.

I’ve seen a few storms

We had four hurricanes pass over us in the 2004-2005 season. Here’s an account of Frances.

Here are some good disaster preparedness tips that are useful even if you aren’t in a hurricane area. I chased 13 hurricanes and had more than half that many chase me. Experience is a good teacher.

August 22, 2015August 22, 2022

Discovery Park of America

The fellow I’m working with on documenting The Bootheel suggested we play hooky and sneak across the river to Union City, Tennessee, to check out the Discovery Park of America. I didn’t expect much, but since he was buying lunch and paying our admission, I agreed.

I mean, after all, Union City, according to the 2010 Census has a population of 10,895. The whole of Obion county has only 31,131 people, less than the population of Cape Girardeau. How big of a deal can this be, anyway?

When you pull into the parking lot, you’re greeted by a futuristic-looking building. It looks big, and it is – it has 100,000 square feet of space, with 60,000 of it devoted to exhibits.

Grounds cover 50 acres

I didn’t even begin to walk the grounds to look at the 100-year-old church, an 1800’s school house, 15 log structures, a gristmill, six train cars, and pretty much an entire vintage community.

There is plenty of color. A handout says the garden contains approximately 24,000 plants, 4000 azaleas, 1000 rose bushes and 750 trees.

20,000-gallon aquarium

A 20,000-gallon aquarium features living creatures from Reelfoot Lake, such as gar, bass, crappie, and turtles.

Welcome to the Discovery Center

This fellow at the entrance to the Discovery Center lobby isn’t your normal Walmart greeter.

83 miles from Cape

Google shows that Union City is 83 miles from Cape, just under two hours of driving time via IL-3 and US-51 S. I was already south of there, so I went in across the Caruthersville bridge and can’t tell you about the roads on the Google route. From what I saw, I think you could probably beat their estimated drive time. It’s well worth it.

There’s a large collection of vintage automobiles and motorcycles, so you might like to contemplate what it would be like to make that drive in one of these shiny cars.

Plenty for kids to do

There are plenty of hands-on displays for the kids. You can let them burn off some energy by going down the two-story slide modeled after the human body. (You have to be three feet tall to go down it.)

A blast of cool air

As I was leaving one exhibit room, a blast of cool air hit me. I turned to find out it was coming from an open doorway leading to a darkened room made up to look like a dungeon. In it were instruments of restraint and torture, including this electric chair with the ironic note, “PLEASE DO NOT SIT.”

When one is in a room that contains a rack, a breaking wheel and a guillotine, one is inclined to obey the signs.

Huge military gallery

This is not just a place to see small objects like arrowheads. The military gallery contains airplanes hanging from the ceiling, a helicopter, several tanks and all kinds of other implements of warfare.

For more information about the Discovery Park of America, go to its website. I’ve been to a lot of museums, including ones in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Seattle, St. Louis, Memphis and Birmingham. This place gives them a run for their money.

Photo gallery

Yes, I know this is overkill. To be honest, I’m including a lot of these photos because they give good captioning and display ideas for my museum friends to steal. I don’t know who does the exhibit design planning here, but the results are spectacular. Click on any image to make it larger, then use the arrow keys to move around.

August 17, 2015

Liberty Bell of the West

Bill Nowell of Nowell’s Camera shop invited Girlfriend Lila and me to go on a ramble to Ste. Genevieve one weekend in 1966 or 1967. On the way, we stopped to see the Liberty Bell of the West. Back in those days, you could walk right up to it and give it a ring or two. Today, you have to push a button that causes a door to open, and you have to look through bars.

The bell was given by King Louis XV of France to the Catholic Church of the Illinois Country in 1741. The people of Kaskaskia rang it in celebration after American General George Rogers Clark occupied the town on July 4, 1778.

Photo gallery of the Liberty Bell in 2012

I haven’t run across the negatives from the Nowell trip, but here are some photos from 2012. Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.