The following story was written by Jesse Stuart. It is the story behind the construction of Ky. 784, which runs along Dummitt Ridge in Greenup County. The road was envisioned by William “Bill” Adkins, who was the county judge in the 1950s. Thanks to Bill’s son, Gary Adkins of Richmond, for sharing this with Kentucky Explorer.
Memorial for a Public Servant
After [my wife] Naomi and I visited Dummitt Ridge yesterday, I wanted to find out why one of the few good roads in Greenup County was built on that ridge, what it had cost, why it was built, and who was behind this project. When Cousin Bill Adkins, a third cousin to my father, was county judge, I had heard people talking about his wasting the taxpayer’s money on some fantastic road project that only went to a cemetery and a few sawmills.
“We won’t have any trouble finding cousin Bill,” I told her as we drove down the valley. “He’s a very methodical man. He will be at Leslie’s Drug Store at 4:30 promptly to get his paper. After he gets his paper, he will sit there and read the front page news.”
“Then, that’s fine,” she said. “While you talk to him, I can get this grocery list filled.”
In a few minutes, we were in Greenup. Naomi went to Uncle Vernon Kendall’s store while I hurried to Leslie’s Drug Store. Sure enough, there stood Cousin Bill out in the middle of the floor reading his paper.
“Bill, I’ve got something to ask you,” I said, laying my hand on his shoulder. He didn’t like to be disturbed when he was reading his paper. “I hear you are the father of the Dummitt Ridge Road. Is that true?”
“Yes, that was my pet project when I was the judge,” he admitted in a low voice so others in the drugstore wouldn’t hear him. “Have you ever been over this road, Jesse?”
“Yes, Naomi and I were from one end to the other yesterday,” I replied. “We found one of the best roads in this county and a very interesting locality.”
“I am happy to hear you say that,” he said, smiling. “A lot of people were never pleased with that project. They didn’t know how badly it was needed.”
“Come over here, and let’s sit down at the fountain and talk about it,” I suggested. “I hate to disturb you. But I am interested in the Dummitt Ridge Road.”
“I can read my paper after I get home,” he said. His face beamed as we walked over to the row of empty stools. Cousin Bill dropped down on one, and I sat down beside him. “I’ll be glad to tell you everything I know about that road.”
I pulled my notebook and fountain pen from my pocket.
“The Dummitt Ridge Road goes back to a dream,” he said.
“Who had that dream?” I asked. “Tell me more about it.”
“I had the dream,” he replied. “You know, Jesse, I have been a public servant of the people here most of my life. I have served them the best I could.”
“You’re right,” I said, agreeing with him.
“For 16 years, I served as deputy sheriff under three different high sheriffs,” he continued. “And I served four years as Greenup County sheriff myself.”
“Yes, I remember many of those rough-and-tumble years,” I said.
“I served under Earl McKenzie, George Crisp and Jake Fisher,” he continued his story. “You know a high sheriff can’t succeed himself in this state. That’s an old joke. If he lives through his four-year term of office he would never want to succeed himself. He would be afraid. I mention this for a purpose. I have checked Greenup County sheriffs and their deputies back to 1800, and I am the only many who served 16 years as a deputy and four years as a high sheriff in this county. I have heard a few bullets sing mighty close. But I am still alive.”
Bill Adkins was surprised that he was alive. But I wasn’t surprised, for he had the cool courage to arrest a man when the going was rough. He was a fearless man who used caution with a smile. He had arrested the desperados where other boastful sheriffs and their deputies had failed. He had really been a good public servant to us. He had lived from a very small salary.
“I served my first term as deputy sheriff of this county back in the Prohibition days, when the going was rough,” he continued. “I was a young man when I was sent out to make the arrests of the killers and the whiskey violators. Of course, I made arrests of all other violators, too. But I was used especially in the tough places. Dummitt Ridge in those days was really the toughest place we had. Honest, it was dangerous for a sheriff to go into that country. Often, I had to go there alone for another deputy couldn’t be spared to go with me.”
“Tell me how on earth you got up on Dummitt Ridge 20 years ago?” I asked him.
“I was just coming to that,” he replied. “I didn’t go up there the Greenup County way, for we didn’t have a road to that ridge. I drove down the Ohio River road, which didn’t have a foot of hard surface in those days. Then at Garrison in Lewis County, I left the main river road and went up Briary to the steep foothills, where I parked my old car and climbed the mountain to Dummitt Ridge. That’s how I got there. I never went to that lawless part of Greenup County that it didn’t take two days. I was a day getting there and one getting back.”
“Where did you sleep?”
“I didn’t sleep,” he replied. “I have been three days and nights going to get a prisoner and fetching him back. It was then that I had dreams of doing something about Dummitt Ridge. Even up until 1950, it was a tough hideaway spot to reach. It was hard to drive a car in there. One had to drive an old car over the log roads men had made to get their sawed-out timber out. And that was the year I was elected judge of Greenup County. I thought after I had to make arrests on that ridge where nephew had killed uncle and cousin had killed cousin and where so many killed their neighbors, that a good road into that place would stop most of the lawlessness.”
“That’s really an idea,” I said. “I had never thought of one’s building a road against crime.”
“That’s what it is,” he continued. “I was criticized over getting that road because there are only a few houses on it.”
“We traveled for miles and never found but three houses,” I told him.
“Yes, but they were once there,” he spoke softly with a wry little smile as he looked at me. “That ridge was filled with moonshiners and bootleggers. Now, many of them have gone over into Lewis County.”
“Now, somebody will have to build a good road into Lewis County,” I said.
“It would break up lawlessness,” Cousin Bill spoke with confidence. “You’ll be surprised what a good road will do! Now it used to take me at least a day to get to Dummitt Ridge. And the whiskey element in the Prohibition days had their spies planted in Greenup to watch for strangers talking to the sheriff and his deputies. They thought they were Federal men, and there would soon be a raid. The spies often guessed right. And they didn’t take any chances. They sent a man on horseback to Dummitt Ridge to warn the moonshiners in a hurry. By the time I got there with the revenue men and my deputies, there wasn’t a still in operation. Everybody had been tipped off by the grapevine. Somewhere at different stations along the way, the rider on horseback was given fresh horses, so he could get there in a hurry. He always got there before we could go down to the river and up Briary in cars and climb the mountain. Now, a man can drive from here to Dummitt Ridge in 40 minutes. He can go up Big Whiteoak to Dummitt Ridge. He can go up to Leatherwood to Dummitt Ridge. And he can go up Three Prong. The high sheriff can ride out there now.”
“What’s the name of the new road you built up there?” I asked.
“It’s not got any name,” he said.
“Not the Bill Adkins Highway, huh?” I teased him.
“No, but a better name for it, maybe,” he chuckled, “is the road that crime built.”
“Was that always a whiskey section of this county?” I asked.
“Before Prohibition, it was a fine community of hard-working people,” he said. “First people who ever came to this county lived there. They are buried up there at The Granny Thomas Graveyard. Did you see it?”
“Yes, we stopped there,” I told him. “We found this cemetery, a very interesting pioneer cemetery.”
“We had good dirt roads over all the county but the Dummitt Ridge section,” he said. “We could go anywhere by automobile at night to make our raids except to Dummitt Ridge. Then our moonshiners moved to that inaccessible ridge where they thought we would never reach them. They moved in and pushed the old settlers back and took the ridge over. But when we got the road back there, these same people pulled out for another wild country, the McDowell area in Lewis County. They left only a few of the old settlers who had helped to pioneer this county. Most of them are up there in the Granny Thomas Graveyard.”
“When I visited that place yesterday, I saw all those graves with fieldstones at their head and feet,” I said. “I wondered how many of them had died before their time because they couldn’t fetch a doctor there or bring a patient out to a doctor or the hospital.”
“You would be surprised how many of them died before their time,” he said. “I happen to know men knifed in fights who bled to death. Their magic sayings to stop blood didn’t always work. Men wounded by bullets would have lived, too, if they could have had medical care. Women died in childbirth out there because they didn’t have the right care. This is another reason I worked and pleaded with the State Highway Department to get them to build a road. Now, the people living on Dummitt Ridge can have medical attention.”
“But when you got the road, the people left,” I said.
“Well, some of them,” he admitted begrudgingly. “But people will come back to the ridge. Let me tell you this story. You remember the house when you went up the right fork of Three Prong and first reached Dummitt Ridge?”
“Yes, I remember that house,” I said. “It was the first one we saw on the ridge.”
“A man by the name of Jamerson lived there,” he told me. “He had lived in this house all of his life. And he was ready to leave that ridge before we started building that road. He had his two-story house and farm up for sale and couldn’t get $1,000 for it. He didn’t want to leave there, but he saw good roads everyplace else, and he wanted to give his children a better chance. So, when we started building the road, he stayed on. When we got the road past his house, he was offered $3,000 for his place. He wouldn’t take it. And before we got the road built, he had died. I keep thinking about that man. I wish he could have lived to have enjoyed the first road that ever was on that ridge.”
“Any more whiskey-making going on out there?” I asked.
“No, the road ended it,” he said with a chuckle. “And I figured it would. They thought they had found a place safe from the law. But the new road gets the law to them in a hurry. Oh, yes, there will be a moonshiner here and there, like over other parts of the county. But moonshining isn’t the profession of the majority of the people now. And another thing, Jesse, the young people can ride off that ridge to high school now. This is the first time in the history of Greenup County the children of Dummitt Ridge could live at home and go to high school. Now, they will become farmers, teachers, nurses and doctors, and they will go back there and change that country. See, what other kinds of progress a good road will bring!”
“Yes, the road that crime built has obliterated crime,” I said. “Sounds like a paradox.”
“That new road has already changed the face of this county,” he said with a smile.
“When we were out there yesterday, I saw three sawmills in operation,” I told him.
“That’s a timber country,” he said. “It wasn’t worth much until we started putting the road through. And for reasons of their own, many didn’t want the road, and they made us pay dearly for that ground. The ground there wasn’t worth more than $6 an acre, and it used to sell for $3 before we started to build the road. They tried to block us every way they could, but we condemned the land and went on with the road!”
“That road opened up a scenic country for people who live in the cities down in the Ohio River Valley,” I said.
“Yes, it opened up a country for the hunters, too,” he said.
“Fox hunters come by the carloads on summer nights. See, there are deer and pheasant in this section too! This is the last wild country left around here!” he said.
“Now, do you have any figures on what it cost to build the road?” I asked.
“I have the exact figures over at my house,” he said. “I can tell you almost the exact amount it cost.”
“That will be close enough,” I told him.
“See, we started this road at Sunshine down in the Tygart River Valley,” he explained. “We brought it all the way up to Schultz and up to Dummitt Ridge and out this ridge to the Carter County line. It took from 1951 to 1954 to build it.”
“Three years to build it?” I asked.
“The first 9 miles from Sunshine to Sugar Camp we built in 1951 at a cost of $86,000,” he said. “Part of that is hard-surfaced road. Now in 1952, we built the next 6 miles from Sugar Camp to the head of the Schultz, and up to The Granny Thomas Graveyard at a cost of $91,000. In 1953, we built the last 7 miles from The Granny Thomas Graveyard out Dummitt Ridge to the Carter County line at a cost of $82,000.”
“Then, this road that crime built cost the taxpayers of Kentucky well over a quarter of a million?” I said. “No wonder some of the taxpayers howled over spending this on a road that serves only half a dozen families left on Dummitt Ridge.”
“Then,” Bill spoke in a surprised tone at my reaction, “you can’t spend too much money to prevent crime! It saves the taxpayers money in the long run!”
“But I’m all for you, Bill, and your project,” I said. “I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s fine to open up this area of Greenup County to give those few children, descendants of our earliest settlers, left there a chance. There might be a great doctor, evangelist, novelist or scientist among them. That’s the old pioneer stock that fought and died for this country. Your road is a scenic drive, too. People can drive up there now and leave the Ohio River Valley if and when there is another flood like in 1937!”
“Then, I’m happy that you agree with me,” he said with a big smile. “Many don’t agree with me now, but someday I hope they will. That road will pay for itself a hundred times. For the next century and maybe longer, this road will take the people up in that land of the sky to level acres of ridgetop, where there are good building sites, meadows, deer, pheasant, clouds and plenty of fresh air. That’s a fine country now. The old pioneers have died, and the lawless elements have vanished. Only a few of the old stock remain. It’s almost a new country.”
“Because you had a dream, you have opened it up again to the people,” I told him. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to write something about how a good road changed a whole county. And right now, I suggest we call this road The Bill Adkins Highway. Let his road be named as a memorial for a good public servant who has given us the best years of his life.”
If you are interested in other articles and books by Stuart, visit or contact the Jesse Stuart Foundation, 4440 13th Street, Ashland, KY 41102, 606.326.1667, jsfbooks.com.