Bicentennial audio interviews

Farmers Featured:

David Chappell, Harold Malcomb, Elizabeth Pruitt, Arthur Hamilton, Billy Davis, Brian Forsee, Glenn Dunavent, Junior Grisham, Freida Smith, Myra Cooper Ayres, and Joy Morgan.

This mural celebrates Owen County’s Bicentennial (1819-2019) while showing the importance of the Kentucky River in early tobacco production. Stripped tobacco was packed in large wooden barrels called hogsheads and prized (pressed). There were prizing barns located throughout the county where farmers brought their tobacco to be packed in the hogsheads. A few of these prizing barns exist today and are truly historical structures. The hogsheads were then taken to be loaded on the Falls City steamboat at the Kentucky River in Owen County for transport to other cities and states. This mural shows Captain Samuel Adams who was a native of our county and a panel showing the Kentucky River.

This mural is located on Main Street in downtown Owenton.