A Run through Local History

Snapshot: 3/8/2020 Easy Run, 11 miles

Sometimes I get so busy training that I forget that there’s more to running than just lowering your PR. Occasionally it’s fun to come up with a certain theme for your run whether that is to create your own challenges or, in my case this past Saturday, to create your own tour. I’ve always loved local history and have read extensively on our city’s past, so I had the thought of running to all of the Civil War sites in town. There are several forts sprinkled across the hill tops, most of which are right in the downtown area and so I mapped out an initial route that came to 15 miles. Ultimately, I decided to cut it short by 4 miles and so I came up with an 11 mile tour through all of the major sites located in town. Going into my taper week before the Wendell Foster half marathon I thought 15 miles would be a little excessive and the 11 mile course would catch most of the major Civil War sites. Our moving pace was slightly over 10 minutes/mile, which is several minutes slower than my target pace for the half marathon this Saturday. During a taper week my basic thoughts are: don’t get hurt and back down the training to mostly just easy miles. Running at your max pace it’s very hard to notice anything around you, so it was nice to take it easy and enjoy some of the history that Bowling Green has to offer.

Bowling Green didn’t see much action during the Civil War, but it was a major transit hub for union soldiers going South. When the war broke out the Confederates quickly came across the state line and occupied the town while the Union invaded Kentucky from the North. So much for being neutral. The Confederate occupation of Bowling Green was relatively short lived, but looking at it from the present day I find it to be very surreal. The rebels quickly built forts on top all of the local hills in and around town on both the South and North bank of the river. The commander of troops was Simon Bolivar Buckner, who was on friendly terms with Atwood Hobson, who was just in the process of building his home at Hobson Grove. As a courtesy, the Hobson home, while being used as an ammunition storage depot, was not destroyed when the Confederates retreated. On a side note, Simon Bolivar Buckner’s son (Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.) was the highest ranking American killed in WWII at the battle of Okinawa.

With this background, I met my brother-in-law Joe Dan and friend Brent Sanford at my daughter’s elementary school near the campus of Western Kentucky University. We began our tour of civil war sites by running straight up the hill on which the campus lies to the remains of Fort Lytle which is at the top. This fort is now a scenic area on the university campus, but in 1861 it was just a large hill on the outskirts of town.

• 

• 

After reading the historic marker we descended the hill towards Park Street and ran by the location of another small fort that was somewhere near the Grider House (1320 Park St.), I’m not sure exactly where. This, by the way, is right at the summit of the infamous Park Street hill located on the BG 26.2 course (Our local marathon held the first Sunday of November each year).

We continued up Park Street all the way to Reservoir Hill Park where the next Fort had been. Like Fort Lytle, this Fort, Fort C.F. Smith, stood atop one of the largest hills in town with views of the entire city below down to the Barren River. On another side note, a certain Col. Benjamin Harrison, who would later become the 23^rd president of the United States, was in Bowling Green after the Union army captured the city and he played a large role in improving the defenses in town after taking them over from the Confederates. The view from Fort C.F. Smith is one the nicest views in all of Bowling Green and we caught it right as the Sun had come up.

• 

• 

After Fort C.F. Smith we next ran down the hill and to the river, where we crossed on the Old Louisville Road bridge, then staying on the eponymous street we climbed the hill on the North bank of the river up to the remains of Fort Baker. There isn’t much left at this site anymore, but I remember coming to a civil war reenactment here as a child. This is one of the only places that saw any action in all of Bowling Green.

After Fort Donelson in Tennessee had fallen to the Union, Bowling Green found itself to be an untenable position for the Confederates, so in February of 1862 they retreated and abandoned the town. The advancing Union troops first occupied Fort Baker, from which they bombarded the town. From what I’ve been able to piece together it does not appear that extensive damage was done to the town or that anyone was killed during this event, although for a first hand account of it I highly recommend reading Josie Underwood’s Civil War Diary. This is an absolute gem of a book that was written by Josie Underwood before and during the war. She hid in a house and in a cellar during the bombardment, but some citizens from town apparently went across the Barren River in a boat with a white flag to signal to the Yankees there were no Rebels in sight and with that Bowling Green’s active role in battle (there was no actual battle) was over, but it would continue to be a major hub and hospital location.

From Fort Baker we once again ran South, downhill back towards the College Street bridge, which was built in the early 1900s on the site of a former bridge that the Rebels burned during their retreat in 1862 (along with the train depot and Josie Underwood’s house). We crossed this scenic Bowling Green landmark and turned West towards Beech Bend Drive.

• 

• 

• 

A few miles later we arrived at our next destination, Fort Webb, which sits on top of a hill just beside the Bowling Green Country Club. Fort Webb is perhaps in the best condition of any of the sites, although now there is a stand of trees around it, in 1861-2 it would have been cleared.

• 

• 

• 

After a few pictures, we continued our run back towards town to the Hobson house, our final destination for the tour. The Hobson House offers tours daily, which are certainly worth the small price of admission. Last year I spent a day roaming the fields and woods along the Jennings Creek search for a site I had seen 10 years previously, which I mistakenly thought were the ruins of an old bridge. I had actually stumbled upon Browne’s Lock, which had stood in the Jenning’s creek, but it took me some time researching maps in the library to figure out exactly what I had found.

There’s probably very few people in town that have managed to find the remains of Browne’s Lock, as Jennings Creek really isn’t very navigable even in a kayak. After I had found it I went across a field and ended up on the Hobson House property, so I decided to take a tour, mainly because I wanted to inquire to them about Browne’s Lock, but unfortunately, no one at the Hobson House had any further information for me.

This was also where I connected the dots about the relationship between Simon Bolivar Buckner Sr. and Jr. When I lived in Okinawa in 2006 I used to explore a lot of historic sites and I had come across the name of General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., as he was the highest ranking American officer killed in the entire war. I was surprised to learn that his father had commanded the Confederates in Bowling Green and that the family actually hailed from Munfordsville, KY just up I-65.

The Hobson House is a beatiful Italianate home just outside of downtown Bowling Green, but located in what would have been a fairly rural setting in 1861. As I mentioned earlier there was a mutual respect between Simon Bolivar Buckner and Atwood Hobson, and so Buckner used the basement of the unfinished home to store munitions but otherwise did not molest the house.

By this point in our run we were all a little tired and we were starting to be pushed for time, so we didn’t linger around the site very long and were soon heading back towards WKU’s campus. We had just under three miles to go, and while I would have liked to stop at the Train depot and the site of the former rifle pits that zig-zagged across what is now Roland Bland Park, we simply didn’t have enough time. Another site that we missed on our 11 mile tour was the location of the Underwood home, which the Confederates took over and on whose property they built another lunette style fort. This site is located in the Mt. Ayr neighborhood next to Keriakes Park, but I am not exactly sure where. We also skipped the riverboat landing where there formerly was a Union hospital. There are other sites as well that we didn’t have time for, but I suppose that just means that I’ll have to organize another tour someday in the future.

---