Jackson

Jackson, the county seat of Breathitt County in eastern Kentucky, is located about seventy-five miles southeast of Lexington at KY 15 and KY 30. When the county was created in 1839, the city, originally named Breathitt Town, was established on the North Fork of the Kentucky River. In 1845 the remote mountain hamlet was renamed Jackson to honor President Andrew Jackson, who died in that year. The first few years of the city's existence saw little growth, and by 1870 Jackson's population had yet to reach one hundred. In that year a gristmill, a log hotel, a few general stores, and houses surrounded the courthouse, a small two-story brick building that was built in 1866 to replace the original log structure. The whole Cumberland Plateau became a hotbed of feudal revenge for many years after 1865 and Jackson was known throughout America as the capital of Bloody Breathitt County.  State troops were sent twice to Jackson during the 1870s and again in 1903 to bring peace to the area. Adding to the city's rough-and-tumble reputation was the 1895 public hanging of "Bad" Tom Smith for murdering the town doctor, and the assassination of U.S. Commissioner J.B. Marcum on May 4, 1903. A two-story brick Victorian courthouse was completed in 1876, and in 1887 the Jackson Academy (Lees College) was established as a Presbyterian institution of learning. The Kentucky Union Railroad arrived in 1891, and as the railroad terminus, Jackson was a major shipping point for the upper Kentucky River region. Large dry goods centers, a lumber company, a brickyard, and other businesses thrived. The city resembled a western boom town, and population by 1910 had reached 2,000. In 1912 the Louisville & Nashville Railroad extended the line to Hazard, and Jackson's importance was diminished. On Halloween night of 1913, a fire destroyed thirty-six buildings, including two churches, a hotel, and the post office. Jackson's growth for the rest of the twentieth century was slow. With the completion of KY 15 in the 1960s and the establishment of a nearby airport in the 1970s, the city was no longer an isolated mountain town. To provide flood control and a recreational facility, the two-and-three-quarter-mile-long Pan Bowl Lake was created in 1963 by rechanneling the Kentucky River and impounding the former channel.