Page 86 - WINE DINE AND TRAVEL MAGAZINE 2020 SPRING EDITION INTERACTIVE

SPIRITS OF LOUISVILLE

& EXPERIENCING A KENTUCKY HUG

The beautiful Lobby Bar in Louisville’s historic Brown Hotel. Opposite: Bourbon Experience: four different bourbons, four different chocolates.

Story & Photography by Priscilla Lister

t a bend in the Ohio River, a was a series of rapids dropping 26 feet the first European settlement here on the
few seminal moments in our over 2.5 miles. Ohio’s Corn Island, when this entire area
country’s history are literally was still part of Virginia. Clark is credited
Abrought to life. Boats navigating this river would have with defeating British forces in the North-
to stop and unload their cargo to carry it west Territories during the Revolutionary
One such illuminating experience even across land. The boats would then “shoot War, and is also considered the founder
brought me to tears. the falls,” meaning they would attempt to of Louisville that lies at this bend in the
thread through the rapids. Some made it; Ohio. The city was named after King Louis
Back in the late 1700s, when rivers were many did not. Settlers stayed and Louis- XVI of France, whose soldiers were aiding
the new nation’s highways, the 981-mile- ville, Kentucky, was born. Americans in the Revolutionary War.
long Ohio had one serious obstruction at
this spot: the Falls of the Ohio, which then In 1778, George Rogers Clark established Also here on the river in 1803, Clark’s

86 WDT MAGAZINE SPRING 2017