Cloverport: Lincoln's River Crossing

The small Ohio River town of Cloverport sits at the mouth of Clover Creek, which gave the town its name when the Kentucky legislature formalized it in eighteen twenty-eight. Its first settler, Joe Huston, ran a ferry across the Ohio from here in the late seventeen hundreds at a spot called Joe's Landing.

In eighteen sixteen, Cloverport witnessed a moment of quiet history. The family of Thomas Lincoln crossed the Ohio River here on their way to a new farm in Spencer County, Indiana. Young Abraham Lincoln was seven years old. The family would spend the next fourteen years in Indiana before Abraham struck out on his own.

The town grew as a river shipping point and coal-oil producer through the mid-nineteenth century. A toll road linking Cloverport to Bowling Green, authorized in eighteen twenty-one, drew trade from the interior. At its modest peak, Cloverport was a working river town, its levee busy with flatboats and steamers.