Town Spring: How Somerset Got Its Streets

Near this spot a natural spring once drew thirsty settlers from across Pulaski County. In eighteen-oh-one, when county leaders chose this hillside as the seat of the new county government, a man named William Dodson donated forty acres for the town. The path to the spring became the most traveled street in town.

A local saying eventually took hold: whoever drinks from the Old Town Spring will always return to Somerset. Today a marker records the spring. The street that followed its path still runs through town, a ghost of the original geography that made this place possible.

Somerset today is the seat of Pulaski County and home to Lake Cumberland, a reservoir that ranks among the largest in the country by volume.