Before Europeans first began to explore the area where Frankfort now stands, the land was heavily forested and teeming with wild game. Shawnee, Delaware, and Cherokee hunting parties followed migrating herds of buffalo, deer, and elk across the Kentucky River near present-day Frankfort. The tribes frequently fought among themselves to control the hunting grounds of Kentucky. In the mid-eighteenth century, backwoodsmen in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas began to feel overcrowded; they complained of land shortages, falling supplies of wild game, and depleted soil, and they cast their eyes on the lush land of Kentucky. In 1751, North Carolina backwoodsman Christopher Gist may have been the first white man to set eyes on the beautiful valley in which Frankfort now lies, but he was forced to leave after learning that Frenchmen and their Indian allies occupied the area (then claimed by France). Frontiersman John Finlay built a log cabin in the area in about 1752, but his hunting and trading—and any further white settlement—were interrupted by the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754. The British won that war, but King George's Proclamation of 1763 then prohibited white settlement of the area. It was not until 1769 that Finley was able to return; he brought with him legendary frontiersman Daniel Boone and four other men intent on hunting and exploration.
Boone, Finley, and other so-called Long Hunters (named for the long periods of time they spent hunting) inflamed the public back East with their stories about the rich land of Kentucky and the opportunities it offered to get rich quick. In 1773, Governor John Murray of Virginia, better known as Lord Dunmore, sent survey parties to Kentucky (then a Virginia county), including one led by Robert McAfee. McAfee and his group surveyed and laid claim to 600 acres of land in and around Frankfort. More settlers poured westward, the Natives reacted with hostility, and in 1774 Lord Dunmore's War erupted. The war ended with the defeat of the Indians and the signing of a peace treaty in the spring of 1775, at about the same time the battle of Lexington and Concord ushered in the American Revolution.
Land speculators took advantage of the distractions of wartime and laid claim to vast areas of Kentucky. Meanwhile, McAfee's doubtful claim to the area around Frankfort lapsed, lawsuits were filed, and in 1786, General James Wilkinson, a fellow soldier and friend of George Washington, found himself in possession, at a very cheap price, of most of what is now the downtown district of Frankfort (north of the Kentucky River). Wilkinson set to work organizing a town. He chose the name Frankfort to honor the memory of a man named Stephen Frank, a Jewish pioneer who had been shot by Indians, possibly near a river crossing known as "Frank's Ford." Streets were laid out and named in honor of Wilkinson, his wife (Ann), his friends from the Revolutionary War, and even for some Spanish friends (Wilkinson was said to be a secret agent of the Spanish government, and it was rumored that he planned to make Kentucky a Spanish colony). Wilkinson built the second house in Frankfort, a log cabin, but his wife refused to live in the crude structure. The house became a tavern that over the years hosted such celebrities as Aaron Burr, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Henry Clay.
Land speculators and pioneers flocked to Frankfort; they cleared land for farms and built houses. By the late 1780s, a church and schoolhouse had been built, and large quantities of tobacco were growing on farms around Frankfort. While the town did not grow as quickly as Wilkinson had envisioned and he decided not to live there himself, he saw that there was money to be made, and in 1791 he built a tobacco warehouse on his Frankfort land. In 1792 Frankfort was named the capitol of the recently admitted state of Kentucky. Up until the last raid took place in 1794, Frankfort settlers were kept busy fending off hostile Indians; thereafter, the tobacco business thrived and salt pork, animal skins, and hemp joined the economic mix, followed by livestock and lumbering. By 1800, Frankfort was the second largest town in Kentucky after Lexington, with a population of 628. A library opened in 1814; several beautiful and elegant homes and churches were built, some of which are still standing; and the central business district began to expand.
The Lexington and Ohio railroad came to town in 1835 and soon Frankfort began to prosper as a manufacturing center. The population grew from 4,755 people in 1860 to 5,396 people in 1874; by 1900, the population was 9,487 people. Residents processed wood from the huge timberlands of Kentucky and produced cotton goods, carriages, paper, lumber, and distilled liquors, including the "corn liquor" for which the state became famous.
Lexington and Louisville had vied to be Kentucky's capital, and when Frankfort's capitol building burned twice, in 1815 and 1824, the two cities challenged the rebuilding in Frankfort. Each time, the structure was rebuilt. The presence of government has flavored the social life and affected the economy of the town. National political figures such as Henry Clay, U.S. Senators John J. Crittenden and John G. Carlisle, and Supreme Court Justice John M. Harlan trained in Frankfort. Nineteenth-century visitors to Frankfort, expecting to encounter backwoodsmen in the legislature, reported astonishment at the eloquence of Kentucky orators.
Kentucky was officially a part of the Union during America's Civil War but many of its citizens were slave owners and Southern sympathizers. The peace of Frankfort was disturbed in 1862 when General Bragg's Confederate Forces seized the city and set up a Confederate State Government. Before the first session met, Yankee guns began firing on the town and the Southerners withdrew. The years following the Civil War saw the development of a modern city on the Kentucky. A school system developed, and by 1900, a movement began urging legislators to fund and construct a modern Capitol. In June 1910 citizens throughout Kentucky gathered to witness the formal dedication of architect Frank Mills Andrews's masterpiece, the Beaux Arts design Kentucky State Capitol.
The early twentieth century brought more disturbances to the peace of Frankfort, punctuated by some periods of prosperity. The city dealt with the assassination of Governor William Goebel during a hotly contested election in 1900, as well as outbreaks of racial violence, a legacy of Civil War days, when more than a third of the town's residents were slaves. The Prohibition era brought a decline in the distilling industry and thus in agricultural production. The Great Depression and a severe drought in the 1930s led to hardship and a decline in population. Further misery came when the Ohio River flooded in 1937, engulfing basements and lifting small homes and businesses off their foundations. Estimated damage was $5 million. But beginning in 1935, the New Deal stimulated a growth in government employment and the beginning of a housing boom. By the time World War II ended, the city, which had changed little since the turn of the century, stood poised to enter its greatest era of growth.
Frankfort experienced a population explosion between 1940 and 1970, from 11,492 residents to 21,356 residents. Demand for housing skyrocketed and farmland rapidly disappeared to make way for subdivisions. Frankfort tripled in size as suburbs were annexed by the city. Realizing the need for a more formal style of government to suit its larger size, in 1956 Frankfort voters approved the manager-commission form of government. Frankfort's infrastructure was modernized and roads were improved, resulting in the move of manufacturing industries to the suburbs, leaving a concentration of government workers downtown. Gradually, the small and compact city, with its charming blend of architectural styles developed over more than a century, expanded into a sprawling city characterized by a more uniform, less ornamental style of construction. Commercial strips grew up where homes once stood; shopping centers sprang up on the outskirts of town, further reducing the importance of downtown Frankfort as a retail center.
The 1960s and 1970s saw considerable downtown building activity, with modern high rises replacing slums but also displacing many African American residents. Capital Plaza, a convention center (which became the home of Kentucky State University Thoroughbreds basketball), and the Federal Building created a new skyline for Frankfort. The city experienced a severe tornado in 1974 that caused millions of dollars in damage. Four years later, in December 1978, the Kentucky River rose to 48.5 feet, breaking the 1937 record by almost a foot. This time the damage exceeded $14.5 million and brought home the need for flood control, a challenge that Frankfort leaders were still grappling with when another disastrous flood occurred in 1997.
Today, Frankfort residents and visitors enjoy the history and quaint charm of small-town living with modern conveniences and larger cities nearby. Frankfort's business climate is cost-effective and has attracted new manufacturing and technology companies. The historic downtown is enjoying revitalization as new businesses move in and become successful.
Historical Information: Kentucky Historical Society at the Kentucky History Center, 100 West Broadway, Frankfort, KY 40601; telephone (502)564-1792