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Mark Archey: EK Railroad Presentation Mark Archey, an Adair County resident who purchased the Shepherd Grade Center, moved here with his wife Stephanie some years ago. He is a member of the Adair County Genealogy Society, and shared a story from his research at last Monday's meeting. Mark told the group at the December meeting, "I'm not from here. I'm from off. So I'll tell you about off a little bit. I grew up in northeastern Kentucky in Greenup County. And among my ancestors are Pattons. So I'm very happy to meet Mr. [Paul] Patton tonight. I'm sure we'll find a common connection. "So what I'm talking about has nothing to do with genealogy directly, and nothing to do with Adair County. But why would it be of interest? Because in doing genealogy research for my ancestors, I'm at the point where I've got to figure out why did these people come to Greenup County? Because the paper trails run out otherwise. And what brought them all in is Greenup County is like the heart of the Hanging Rock Iron District of northeastern Kentucky. On both sides of the Ohio River, there were 30 or more iron furnaces that were running there typically. "And now the Eastern Kentucky Railroad, which you've got the handout about (wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Kentucky_Railway), and this is a spike from the Eastern Kentucky Railroad. It ran from 1867. They went bankrupt in 1919, and then part of it continued to run until 1933. And my mother was born in Hitchens, Kentucky, which is one of the stops on the EK Railroad. And she swears she remembers riding it into Greenup, but that's not possible because she was born in 1933, my mother was. So what she really did is she took the C&O from Hitchens to Catlettsburg, Kentucky, and then another railroad down the river. "But anyway, the railroad went in to serve the iron furnaces, but unfortunately it was built about the time the iron furnaces started to sort of peter out and dwindle down, because they were ultimately all replaced by blast furnaces that were built along the river, and the region stayed a powerhouse in iron and steel until about the 1990s. The Armco Steel Mill, where a lot of my ancestors worked--my dad, my uncles, and others--it was just torn down. In fact, I had a couple of summer jobs there as an engineering intern and as a laborer. But it was just torn down maybe three years ago. "But the EK Railroad went along throughout what is now Route 1, going through Greenup County. And my uncle has a house on Route 1, and he found this at some point and believes it to be from the EK Railroad, so he gave it to me. And of course, he was an Archey, so it's not very reliable whether this is in fact from the EK Railroad or not. "But anyway, among these stops, a couple of things that may be of interest to you: "Riverton used to be a separate community from Greenup, and right now they've merged together. There's no difference between Riverton and Greenup. If you go to the Greenup County Fairgrounds, go to the municipal swimming pool, it is what was the turntable for the EK Railroad. So it's a round swimming pool, which is kind of unusual. But they put a sloped bottom in it, so it's got a deep side and a shallow side, and that's what they use as their city swimming pool still. "Pactolus, stop number 21 on here. Pactolus is where Roy Rogers lived as a kid. (sites.rootsweb.com) "So that's what I know about that. What's the county seat of Greenup County? Greenup. Greenup is the county seat of Greenup. I worked in Ashland." Special thanks to Dr. Mig Feuser for sharing transcriptions of the presentations. This story was posted on 2025-12-08 17:57:47
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