Nearly 100 years ago, citizens of Bell County in southeastern Kentucky wanted to establish something the naturally beautiful Bluegrass State lacked—a state park.
Their goal was to attract tourists and, in turn, improve the local economy.
Kentucky’s 1924 General Assembly, at the urging of then-Gov. William Fields, created a three-member Kentucky State Park Commission to look at available park sites in the state. Fields named Willard Rouse Jillson, a geology teacher at the University of Kentucky in his mid-30s, to chair the commission.
Jillson met with the people of Bell County. The nearby Cumberland Gap area was first considered as a possible state park site, but its potential as a future national park led Jillson to look elsewhere, and in 1926, Kentucky’s first state park opened.
Initially called Cumberland State Park, its name was changed in 1938 to Pine Mountain State Park to avoid confusion with the similarly named Cumberland Falls State Park, which later came into the parks system.
Three other state parks quickly followed: Natural Bridge in Powell County, Pioneer Memorial in Harrodsburg (today called Old Fort Harrod), and Blue-Gray near Elkton in Todd County.
All four of Kentucky’s earliest state parks are in operation today except Blue-Gray, named in honor of Kentucky being the birthplaces of United States President Abraham Lincoln and President of the Confederate States Jefferson Davis.
A 2007 article in the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville stated that the 80-acre park site started well with an inn but closed in the late 1930s as it bled money. One of its last activities was to serve as a shelter for victims of the 1937 Ohio River flood in the Paducah area.
Seven state parks in western Kentucky took on a similar role in December 2021, providing emergency shelter to about 900 people who were displaced by the deadly tornadoes that struck Mayfield, Dawson Springs and several other communities.
Growth of Kentucky State Parks
From its humble beginnings, Kentucky’s state parks system has grown to 45 parks today, 17 of which are resorts with overnight lodging and dining. The system also has eight historic sites, 13 golf courses, 34 pools and beaches, 15 marinas and 30 campgrounds. Its annual operating budget is about $99.4 million.
The Kentucky state parks system blossomed from the 1940s to the 1970s with much expansion. Thirteen parks were added in the early 1960s as part of an effort to establish the largest state resort park system in the United States.
It often was referred to as “the nation’s finest.”
Help for Parks in Disrepair
State budget cuts over the years led to delays in keeping the parks spruced up and providing amenities that a flurry of new, large private lodging companies offered.
This year’s General Assembly provided an infusion of dollars to improve the state parks. “One of our greatest and best assets is the natural beauty of the state,” state Senate President Robert Stivers, a Republican from Clay County, said on March 29 as House-Senate conferees crafted a two-year state budget. “We have made some serious investments in tourism.”
Those investments for the state parks system amount to $10 million a year for maintenance—up from $5 million a year—and $150 million for an overhaul plan.
That plan calls for the parks system to come up with improvement recommendations involving the private sector or local government partnerships by December for consideration by state lawmakers in their 2023 session.
Sen. Chris McDaniel, a Kenton County Republican and chair of the Senate budget committee, said at the March budget meeting that state parks “are fairly antiquated in their amenities and we are directing” the state parks system to review its needs and make recommendations to the legislature next year, “ideally involving some private sector and local partners.”
Mike Berry, secretary of the state Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet which oversees state parks, appreciates the legislature’s funding and said in a recent interview in his Frankfort office that it is much needed. The $20 million over the next two years for maintenance will help in defraying the system’s list of deferred maintenance that totals $230 million, he said.
Among the items at the top of the maintenance list, Berry said, is restoration at Jenny Wiley State Park in Floyd County. A fire damaged its marina in 2018.
Other immediate maintenance work, Berry said, includes upgrading water and sewer systems, campgrounds, roofs, accessibility for disabled people, security and IT infrastructure.
Berry said the campground at Kentucky Dam Village in Marshall County is in a flood plain and regularly needs maintenance.
All 17 resort parks have internet services, he said, but some are plugged into local providers and won’t allow visitors to stream movies. He’s hopeful that the Kentucky Wired project will help. It is a state-run project constructing more than 3,000 miles of high-speed fiber optic cable reaching every Kentucky county.
It’s too early to say what the $150 million in the second year of the state budget will mean for the parks system, according to Berry. But he said it likely will involve some of the more popular resort parks such as Lake Cumberland near Jamestown, Lake Barkley near Cadiz, and Kenlake near Hardin.
An interesting tidbit about Kenlake is that a 300-acre state park for Black visitors only was built nearby. The so-called Cherokee State Park, built by the Tennessee Valley Authority, opened in 1951. It was the only segregated state park in the South and one of only three in the entire country.
Berry said that Cherokee State Park was included in the Green Book, an annual travel book for Black motorists published from 1936-66, when discrimination against Blacks and other non-whites was more widespread. The subject was featured in the 2018 movie Green Book.
Cherokee closed in 1963 upon the desegregation of travel and lodging facilities, and it became part of Kenlake.
About 7.9 million people visited Kentucky state parks in 2019, the year before COVID-19 struck. But many people still visited the parks during the pandemic, Berry said. “Attendance stayed steady. People still wanted to get outside.”
Lodging in state parks in 2021 brought in about $18.3 million, with 162,479 reservations. Campgrounds took in about $6.1 million, with 79,622 reservations.
Parks for Our Posterity
Gov. Andy Beshear said the new investments in Kentucky state parks are worthwhile. “We are committed to maintaining a world-class park system, especially with the growth and emphasis we’ve seen around outdoor tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our Kentucky state parks offer unique opportunities for our families and visitors alike, and they also serve as resources in our greatest time of need, so it’s critical we support and invest in them,” Beshear said.
“People will always want a place for relaxation in the beauty of nature,” Berry said.
Berry’s comment echoed those that Jillson, the first state parks director, wrote in the preface to his 1929 book Kentucky State Parks. “Mere words can never adequately describe the many points of natural beauty in Kentucky,” Jillson wrote. “The vastness of the great outdoors; the initial detail of each physical component; the myriad forms of life; the exquisiteness and adaptation of each organism; the soul uplifting silence of the primeval forest; the fleeting liquid note of a passing songster—these and a thousand other wonderful experiences await the lover of nature in the wilderness.”
The acquisition and preservation of parks by the state, wrote Jillson, “constitute a service in which we may all unite with pride and enthusiasm—assured in advance of an appreciative posterity.”