Cable Television from the Top of Kentucky

You are standing on the highest ground in Kentucky. This is Black Mountain, rising more than four thousand one hundred feet above the sea, on the Virginia line in Harlan County coal country.

That height was no accident of fame. It made one man's dream possible. William Risden was a man who wanted wanting to bring television to a town hemmed in by mountains. Down in the valleys the signal could not reach. So Risden climbed to where it could.

He is credited with building an early cable television system right up here, pulling broadcasts out of the air on the summit and running them down the slope to the homes below. His Cumberland Cable Company is remembered as a pioneering early cable system. A plaque on the peak honors him.