September 2015 – We stayed in Maysville Kentucky for two weeks, and every day was filled with fun things to do. Some of our favorites were various tours we took around town.

Dawn in Maysville, Kentucky

Kentucky is tobacco country, and Maysville once flourished as the heart of the burley tobacco industry. Burley tobacco leaves are what give cigarettes their flavor, and the climate and landscape here is ideal for growing this kind of tobacco.

A mural on the Maysville floodwall shows the view of a tobacco field during the harvest
as seen from inside a barn where the cut leaves have been hung for drying

This is a very labor intensive industry, and it seemed that all the guys we talked to had worked in the tobacco fields at some point when they were younger. It almost seemed as if it was a rite of passage to spend some teenage years making money out in the hot sundrenched tobacco fields or climbing high up in the barns where the leaves are carefully hung to dry.

Tobacco leaves drying

Our friend Norbert wanted to be sure we experienced this unique aspect of Maysville life, and he took us out to some fields to see the harvesting in action. We’d never seen tobacco fields before, but in no time we could recognize the broad, yellowing leaves from a distance. We wandered in and out of a few barns utterly wide-eyed at the painstaking effort it takes to cut and dry a tobacco plant’s precious leaves.

Burley tobacco, which gives cigarettes their flavor, is the leaf that is grown here

Apparently, farm machinery has been developed to take some of the back breaking effort out of the cutting process, but it doesn’t do the job nearly as well as human hands. As sweat poured down our brows in the sweltering Kentucky sun, we watched a bunch of strapping young men bounding on and off of tractors, cutting the leaves, loading them up on trucks and driving them off to the barn.

Cutting tobacco is very labor intensive work.

As we followed a truck to one of the barns, we noticed other trucks loaded with tobacco leaves on the roads too. This was cutting season, and now that the plants were ready to be harvested, it was all hands on deck to get it done.

Harvesting tobacco

In the barns, we watched in amazement as these young men leaped up into the rafters effortlessly. They were nimble, strong and quick on their feet. Sidestepping out along the beams, they each took a wide stance facing the racks of leaves, and then the bucket brigade began.

Guys on the ground unloaded the leaves from the truck and passed them up to waiting hands in the rafters that, in turn, passed them higher. And so it went, up and up and up until the guys at the top placed the leaves on the racks to dry.

Young men climbed high in the rafters and passed the tobacco leaves up from hand to hand

The tobacco industry has all but disappeared today, but the elegant buildings of downtown Maysville are testament to a time when the local industry thrived. One particularly beautiful building is the Cox Building

When we first arrived, everyone kept sending us to the Cox Building. Afterall, not only is it home to the College Cafe, with its yummy desserts and inexpensive gourmet Friday lunches, but it also houses the visitors center on the second floor.

And everyone kept telling us, “Make sure you take a tour of the Cox Building too!”

When we poked our heads inside the door of the visitors center, we saw an enormous corner office with a big desk and huge windows overlooking the town.

The elegant Cox Building.

Suddenly we heard a perky, welcoming voice greeting us, and we quickly got caught up in a rapid fire conversation with a petite and vivacious gal named Suzie. As she talked to us about how much she loved living in Maysville, we were struck that she didn’t have even a hint of that leisurely, drawn out Kentucky drawl we’d been hearing around town. She spoke with a British accent!

She was talking so fast about the history of Maysville and the history of Kentucky that I was still scratching my head to figure out out how a Brit came to be the visitors center’s hostess of this very cool and quintessentially American town as we found her leading us up the stairs on a tour that would soon reveal the many hidden secrets of the stately yet mysterious Cox Building. But how unique and special it is that a small town filled with people who grew up together welcomes not just tourists but new residents with such open arms!

You’d never guess what lies inside this building!

It turns out that the Cox Building is a Masonic Temple and that the Freemasons of the York Rite Knights Templar built it to their very unusual specifications over a century ago. In the last few years, the building has been lovingly restored, and by some stroke of luck, what might have been a very superficial makeover was given a chance to become a very detailed restoration.

A beautiful stained glass window in the Cox Building.

Back in 2010, the Cox Building suffered a terrible fire caused by the heat of a workman’s light igniting the tinder dry interior wood. The whole town watched in horror as flames shot out of the turrets (there are heart wrenching photos of the fire on the first floor of the building).

That fire could easily have been the end of this magnificent building. However, a wise insurance agent had insisted that the town guard against disaster and insure the building for its true value. So, when this disaster struck, they were financially prepared.

But of course! This is, after all, a town that has been trained to prepare for disaster by the Mighty (and unpredictable) Ohio River!

The insurance claim allowed the town to attend to every detail in the building’s reconstruction, and what details there are. The frescoes on the walls and ceilings are exquisite!

The Asylum is an enormous room that is decorated with fabulous frescoes on the walls and ceiling

I won’t give away all the secrets of the Cox Building here, because the mysteries of the building and its Masonic origins are best experienced in person. The unusual architecture, bizarre staircases, and obscure symbols etched on everything from interior door hinges to exterior stonework all left us reeling.

So, we’ll join the chorus: When you visit Maysville, take a tour of the Cox Building!

Unusual symbolism of the York Rite Knights Templar

Another special tour we enjoyed was through the Kentucky Gateway Museum. The entire history of Maysville is written out and shown with pictures in great detail, from the arrival of Simon Kenton and Daniel Boone, who settled the area, through the rise of industry, to the rise of the Ohio River floodwaters. (By the way, the Boone family tavern was down by the river and you can see headstones of the Boone relatives buried in the Pioneer Cemetery in town).

Our favorite part, however, was the miniatures exhibit. The Kathleen Savage Miniatures collection is a stunning display of building replicas done in exact one twelfth scale, that is, where one inch equals one foot.

Photos of the miniature replicas belie their size because the scale is perfect unto itself.
This jewelry store is just inches tall.

There are living room interiors and dining room interiors complete with furniture and table place settings (imagine a fork or spoon in perfect 1/12 dimensions!). One of our favorites was the jewelry store. Peeking into the well lit store through the windows and door, you can see jewelry on display. Every piece is crafted with real gem stones!

The centerpiece of the whole exhibit is a replica of Princess Diana’s ancestral home.

The extraordinary London Spencer House,
Princess Diana’s ancestral home

The exterior of this building is extremely grand, and I found that while I was peering at the enormous dining room and luxurious bedrooms I could almost imagine what life would be like inside such a home. Being served at the long dining room table or relaxing in the library almost seemed possible!

All of the miniatures have paintings on the walls along with candles and vases and all the other decorations that go with an elegant home. The surprise in Spencer House was seeing miniature portraits of Diana herself!

The table settings and wall decorations are all exquisitely made.

Maysville boasts another wonderfully skilled craftsman who brings antiques to life, but in full, lifesize scale. Joe Brannen replicates antique furniture in a wonderful workshop at the end of the main drag in town. We stopped by to visit and were instantly enveloped in the deliciously pungent smell of wood.

Joe Brannen showed us his fine furniture reproductions workshop

Joe has every woodworking tool imaginable, and there are pieces of wood on the workbenches that are in every stage of transformation from raw wood to fine works of art. Out front we saw the finished products: beautiful pieces of museum quality furniture.

Each piece is expertly made, bringing 1790’s furniture to life today.

Maysville boasts its own homegrown Hollywood celebrity family fame too. Singer Rosemary Clooney was born in Maysville in 1928, and her nephew, George Clooney grew up in the area.

A mural on the Maysville floodwall honors hometown sweetheart Rosemary Clooney

Celebrity sightings are fairly common in Maysville, and when we had dinner overlooking the river at Caproni’s, we admired a huge display of dinner plates signed by all kinds of dignitaries that have eaten there. Front and center, of course, was a plate signed by George Clooney!

Rosemary’s nephew, George Clooney, ate at Caproni’s too!

We thoroughly enjoyed Maysville, Kentucky, but what really surprised us during our stay was how many events there were going on. It seemed that every day there was some kind of special gathering, and in no time our usually empty Day Planner was full to overflowing with activities. We just had to stick around!

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NOTE: The timing of this post is really unfortunate. I discovered after publishing it that in the same moments that I was writing about the Cox Building fire above, another horrific blaze was burning in a group of row houses in downtown Maysville. These were buildings we knew well from our runs and walks in town. Tragically, five people died in the fire, a mother, her three young children and a neighbor. Words can’t express the grief we feel for our special friends in this beautiful and vibrant town as they rally together once again in the face of unspeakable loss.

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Here’s a little more info about some of these special spots in Maysville:

• The Cox Building – History and construction of this extraordinary Masonic Temple
• Kathleen Savage Miniatures Collection – World class miniatures exhibit
• Kentucky Gateway Museum – Town history and home to the miniatures collection
• Rosemary Clooney – Singer and recording artist
• Caproni’s on the River – Italian food with a view!
• Where is Maysville, Kentucky? – Google Maps

If you take your RV to Maysville, there are two RV parks across the river in Aberdeen, Ohio, that have a great view of the town:

• Maysville River Park and Marina – On the Kentucky side of the river in Maysville
• Lively Lady Marina & Campground – RV camping on the Ohio side of the river in Aberdeen

Other posts from our RV travels to Maysville, Kentucky:

• Thanks for the Great Times, Maysville KY!! 11/01/15
• Maysville Kentucky – Tobacco, Freemasons, Miniatures & Clooneys! 10/19/15
• A Sweet Life on the Ohio River – Maysville, Kentucky 10/04/15
• Maysville, Kentucky – Come for the History, Stay for the People! 09/23/15
• OMG – We Made The Front Page! 09/07/15

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September 2015 – We knew as soon as we got to Maysville, Kentucky, that this was a unique town and that something special was going on here. But what makes one town stand out from all the rest?

A bird’s eye view of Maysville Kentucky

For one thing, there are some great bakeries that make this town very sweet!

On our first morning in town, we discovered the Parc Café where we found delicious lattés and yummy croissants and muffins in a really pretty setting. During our stay we kept coming back for more, and we found that there were different kinds of goodies coming out of the oven every time we stopped in.

The Parc Cafe is a great spot for a leisurely cuppa joe

Even more unusual is The College Cafe. This little corner bakery is where the students from the Maysville Institute of Culinary Arts show off what they have learned in class. And all I can say is that whoever is teaching down there really knows their stuff.

We dove into sinfully delicious brownies and cookies, and stocked up our RV pantry for later too, and all for pennies on the dollar, because they sell their wares at prices that just cover their costs!

Students from the Maysville Institute of Culinary Arts strut their stuff here – yum!

But man doesn’t live by bread alone. There was something else here in Maysville that drew the town together, made the friendships so strong, and gave us a sense that neighbor helps neighbor and rich and poor rub shoulders without prejudice.

Pretty flowers in a city park

As we walked down to the river, we found that Maysville is actually a walled city. Unlike European walled cities, it isn’t walled against human invaders. Instead, it is walled against a much more powerful and brutal adversary: the Ohio River.

Maysville is protected from the menacing Ohio River by an enormous floodwall.

This towering concrete wall protects the town from the river’s floodwaters that have a nasty habit of rising to alarming heights with frightening regularity. The back side of the floodwall, facing into town, is decorated with beautiful and enormous murals that stand two dozen or so feet high. Each one depicts a period of Maysville’s history, starting with the Shawnee Indian buffalo hunters who stalked their prey in the area in the 1600’s.

The first floodwall mural in the series shows the Shawnee Indian buffalo hunts of the 1600’s

Another mural depicts a later period in the 1800’s when paddle boats cruised up and down the Ohio River, connecting Maysville to distant towns and giving birth to a thriving economy as goods and people traveled up and downstream.

The Ohio River gave Maysville a highway to the world

A few decades later, the town’s buildings had become much taller and the paddle boats had been replaced by huge barges. Maysville had become a very important port, and industry was booming.

By the late 1800’s Maysville was a truly happening place with big riverfront buildings and huge barges
delivering and shipping goods

But then the Ohio River flooded the town, first in 1884 and then again in 1937. Spring rains and snowmelt rushed downriver from the north, and the water in the city streets rose higher and higher until the buildings were immersed.

The Ohio River asserts its authority by flooding the town in 1884

The 1937 flood was such a doozy that it wiped out many of the buildings on Front Street right along the river. Rather than giving up in despair, however, the townspeople responded by banding together and erecting an enormous floodwall to protect their town from the river in the future.

The floodwall gate at Limestone Landing

At Limestone Landing there is a huge floodwall gate. As we walked through, we wondered how the city closed the gate when floodwaters came. A city worker named Terry showed us the brick partitions that are stored right next to the gate. Would there really be time to get all those things in place? I asked him. Oh yes, he said, you usually get a few days’ notice!

The gate is closed by inserting these partitions
into the slots in the edges of the gate

I looked out at the placid and seemingly harmless water. The Ohio River sure didn’t look like an enemy, and it certainly wasn’t an enemy that used ambush tactics. Instead, it is a much more sinister foe that gives you plenty of advance warning before it attacks, and then relentlessly advances, inch by frightening inch!

It was hard to imagine those floodwaters rising so. Terry described standing on the railroad tracks alongside the river and watching a house float by in the terrifying flood of 1997.

Yet the river is very beautiful and placid 99% of the time. Down at the river’s edge the town has built a wonderful zig-zag boardwalk where we watched barges pushing cargo up and down the river under the Simon Kenton Memorial Bridge.

There is a wonderful boardwalk along the river at Limestone Landing

One day a school class came down to the river to watch an old World War II ship sail past, and we listened from a distance as they were given a little lesson about the geography of the states of Ohio and Kentucky and the river that runs between them.

School kids learn the history of their town
and the importance of the Ohio River

In the distance we could see a power plant that also relies on the river for its operations.

The Ohio River is at the foundation of the area’s economy

The Ohio River plays an important part in many aspects of day to day life here. And just as the barges carry goods up and down the river day in and day out, trains have done the same thing right next to the river for a century.

Trains parallel the barges next to the river.

Maysville is a waterfront town, and Limestone Landing is a great place to enjoy the beauty of the river. From the floodwall gate a tunnel goes underneath the train tracks to the river, and hundreds of clay tiles line the tunnel walls, each one imprinted with a child’s hand. This very cool riverside artwork was a school project in the mid 1990’s.

Touching artwork decorates the walls of the tunnel under the train tracks,
courtesy of the local high school kids in the mid 1990’s

We’d never spent much time in a river town before, and as the days passed we began to realize just how deeply the Ohio River is integrated into Maysville’s soul. It’s not just that the river gave rise to the town’s early settlement and burgeoning economy two centuries ago. It is simpler and yet also more subtle than that.

The Ohio River put Maysville on the map, but in return, it has reminded the town, in startling 50-60 year intervals ever since, that it also has the ability to take it off the map!

The oldest folks in town remember the horrific devastation of the flood of 1937. Most everyone else remembers the flood of 1997 when the river crested just shy of the top of the flood wall.

As this barge floats past Maysville, it’s hard to imagine how devastating an Ohio River flood can be.

But Maysville gets plenty of small reminders of what the river can do in between those mammoth floods. Last year’s heavy snows and rains brought the river almost to the base of the floodwall in the spring, covering the zig-zag boardwalk by many feet and rising through the clay tile decorated tunnel and going right up the staircase that leads to the floodwall gate. It did the same thing a few years earlier.

Without a doubt, living with a neighbor — and benefactor — just over the wall that is as temperamental as the Mighty Ohio River will shape a town’s personality.

Perhaps it has united the community in ways that other towns never experience. Keeping the river at bay must be a special source of pride, and certainly everyone we met expressed a genuine affection for Maysville that is far deeper than most people feel for their hometown.

The historic Simon Kenton Memorial Bridge

And perhaps the bakeries in Maysville are so good because people in town understand the importance of living by this credo:

Life is short and uncertain — eat dessert first!

High up on 6th Street we got an awesome bird’s eye view of the town and the river as we looked across the rooftops at the two suspension bridges, the older Simon Kenton Memorial Bridge and the very modern William Harsha suspension bridge in the distance.

Maysville is flanked by two beautiful suspension bridges.
The William Harsha bridge in the distance has a wonderfully sleek and modern design.

In the days that followed, we learned that there was another equally important sculptor, besides the Ohio River, that played a role in forming Maysville’s unique spirit: the tobacco fields. And we were very fortunate to be given a special view of this labor intensive industry up close…

RV Camping near Maysville, Kentucky:

• Maysville River Park and Marina – On the Kentucky side of the river in Maysville
• Lively Lady Marina & Campground – On the Ohio side of the river in Aberdeen

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Here’s a little more info about Maysville, Kentucky:

• Floodwall Mural Project – Info and history
• Maysville Institute of Culinary Arts – Facebook page
• Parc Cafe – Facebook page
• Where is Maysville, Kentucky? – Google Maps

Other posts from our RV travels to Maysville, Kentucky:

• Thanks for the Great Times, Maysville KY!! 11/01/15
• Maysville Kentucky – Tobacco, Freemasons, Miniatures & Clooneys! 10/19/15
• A Sweet Life on the Ohio River – Maysville, Kentucky 10/04/15
• Maysville, Kentucky – Come for the History, Stay for the People! 09/23/15
• OMG – We Made The Front Page! 09/07/15

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Our most recent posts:

More of our Latest Posts are in the top MENU above.