I received an email from a friend just
after the work on the Woodland Triangle began. He was concerned that
they crew replacing the sidewalk along High St has also removed the
historic white milestone. It was something that both of us thought
would be a travesty.
When I drove home that night, I went
out of my way to check and it is still there. This time luck was on
our side.
There is a description in George
Ranck's History of Lexington,of
a survey ordered by
the town's trustees in the spring of 1791 and taken verbatim from the
Trustee's Book.
"Surveyed by order of the trustees of the town of Lexington, 204 acres of land, including the court-house of Fayette county in the center, in a circular figure of two miles in diameter. Beginning at A (a point), one mile southeast from the said court-house, at a post on the northeast side of the road, running thence south 56 (degrees) west 125 poles to a post crossing Tate's creek road at 85 poles;”
The
Lexington
Press,
in their edition of May 5, 1871, reported that the City council
proposed to mark the city boundary with a ring of stones placed 500
feet apart. A week later a crew under the direction of Col. De La
Pradele were busy setting the stones to mark the boundaries of City
at one mile from Court House. This came just two months after a
proposal to make the city limits a square rather that a circle.
Work
was still progressing in November of the following year. By 1873 the
City
Council voted to leave the city boundaries the same and new stones be
put up at appropriate distances.
Now, if you take a
one mile radius from the old Court House and superimpose it on a map,
that point A is almost exactly where Walton Ave intersects E Main St.
Following that sweeping arc to the southwest toward E High St., or
what would have been called the road to Tate's creek in those days,
you will find a white stone set in the ground. It is about 10 to 12
inches to a side and well weathered. It is also one mile from the
old Court House.
One mile in the
other direction from the Court House on Leestown Rd, just opposite
the entrance to the Calvary cemetery, is a similar stone, also set
well in the ground and weathered. Neither of these stones have any
plaques or markings to tell what they are (or what I suspect them to
be.) I believe them to be the two remaining stones from that project
of over 140 years ago.
When I spoke to the
city's construction manager, overseeing the work at the Woodland
Triangle, he had no idea that the stone was even there. I also found
out the the city's Division of Historic Preservation was requiring an
application for a Certificate of Appropriateness for replacing the
sidewalk, even after the work was completed. This is required for
all historic overlay zones, yet no one is looking out for a possibly
145 year old stone marker?
Are these the only remaining stones?
Have the others been carelessly removed because someone did not know
(or care) what they were? It would stand to reason that other stones
would appear along the aforementioned arc at 500 foot intervals.
In 1871 the Woodland Park did not exist
nor did any of the adjacent neighborhoods and that interval would
span approximately half way through the future park. The fall of
1884 saw several crews of men construct a large lake of no more than
3 acres. This lake, called Lake Chenosa, was placed squarely on the
city boundary. Surely, someone remembered the boundary stone
placement of a dozen years previous so as to avoid them.
By my calculations, a stone 500 feet
along the arc would appear near the existing first base dugout
structure of the ball-field which occupies the former “lake”
site. Approximately twenty or so feet past and ten or so feet
behind. I have not been there lately to look for it and it does not
show up in any recent aerials. Also, some years ago the Parks
maintenance crews reworked that hillside for drainage issues.
It puzzles me as to why these stones,
if they are what I think they are, are not identified. This town is
so quick to claim anything old as historic and they have rushed to
protect items of lesser age. We have even been known to remove major
historical artifacts from their original context, thereby diminishing
their true worth. This has happened to at least two county boundary
markers.
I repeat, I believe that we dodged a
travesty recently and I hope that we can prevent it in the future.
