Published: January 02, 2008 10:05 am            

Reflecting on Pulaski’s history

Retrospective

It’s fun to reflect; to glance backward and see how Somerset and Pulaski County have earned a reputation as the fastest growing community in southeastern Kentucky.

New Year’s Day made for a quiet newsroom mainly because everybody else was sleeping in after celebrating the arrival of infant 2008. Some had a hangover; some just stayed up past the midnight hour; and some are too old to celebrate. Those in latter stages of life are just glad to be here, even if they report for work.

Regardless, untangled moments without ringing telephones allowed a reporter to flip through some old editions of the Commonwealth Journal. The original plan was to look backward to see what was making news in January at the beginning of each decade for the past 50-60 years. We fudged a bit at the start to get us back to 1946, shortly after World War II ended.

The year 1946 was particularly interesting in Somerset because the old Somerset City Hospital opened in a new building (now Brithaven) on Bourne Avenue and the Goodall Company (later Palm Beach) moved into its new building, also on Bourne Avenue. Goodall had operated in the basement of the Hotel Beecher, now the Beecher House on South Main Street. The partially vacant Palm Beach building made news late in 2007 when it was announced that the structure will be remodeled and get a new facade.

You may not remember, but at one time that there was a gymnasium in the basement of the Hotel Beecher, constructed in 1931. Numerous basketball games were played at that site.

Our search through newspaper files confirmed that each decade brought a shining face to the Queen City of the Cumberlands and its jeweled wraparound named in honor of Count Casimir Pulaski, a Revolutionary War hero.

This community has had its ups and downs over the years. There’s no denying that. But, warts and all, it has grown so fast even natives can’t comprehend a gradual transformation into a mini-metropolis connected by an unprecedented system of newly built highways.

Consider this. There was a time in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the junction of East Mt. Vernon and Maple Streets in front of the Commonwealth Journal building was the busiest intersection in the community.

We practically glowed with achievement when the Department of Highways installed those nifty “walk” “don’t walk” signals at Mt. Vernon and Maple. Some of us walked across the street when we didn’t have to just to punch the button on the lamp pole and watch that little light shaped like a hand beckon us to the other side. It was really up town!

Those were the days before the Ky. 80 bypass, Ky. 914, Cumberland Parkway and I-66. It was when the “Ohio Navy” plied through downtown, did a half circle around Fountain Square headed to Lake Cumberland. Every other car was pulling a boat.

There were no shopping centers. All the major businesses were downtown, including JJ Newberry Company with its lunch counter. A lunch counter in a department store was considered “big time,” just like one would see in Louisville or Lexington. Truth be told, most folks around here didn’t go that far away from home.

In reality, early traffic lights were small potatoes. Now, there are 29 signaled intersections on U.S. 27 between Uni-versity Drive and Somerset Boat Dock Road, and hundreds more across the county. Somerset is often referred to as the town “with all them traffic lights.”

Somerset during the 1950s had no more than three or four signaled intersections. There was a “red light” at East Mt. Vernon and Maple streets; at U.S. 27 and Ky. 80; and a flashing signal at Oak and College in front of Somerset High School. That was about it.

The four-lane highway between Somerset and Burnside was completed about 1959. Folks were secretly laughing at Gov. Happy Chandler and his local contact person, Arthur Prather, for getting the two-lane road, called the “truck route,” expanded to four lanes.

“They have got to be kidding! No way is a four-lane highway needed between Somerset and Burnside,” giggled the detractors. Most of the business-lined, eight-mile stretch is now six lanes and accommodates nearly 40,000 traffic movements a day in some spots. It’s a shame that Chandler and Prather couldn’t have lived to see their dream come true.

Flipping through old newspaper, beginning shortly after World War II and hopscotching decade by decade to the present gives a thumbnail sketch of our amazing little corner of the world:



January 1946:

• These were the days when the “Winters of our Youth” were unaffected by global warming. A 4-inch snow, topped with sleet and rain, plagued Pulaski County as 1946 dawned.

• Work was under way again on Wolf Creek Dam after being halted by the war. Gates of the dam were closed in December 1950 and Lake Cumberland flushed against more than 1,200 miles of shoreline. That same lake, an economic engine powering a 10-county region, was the top news story of 2007 because of leaks in the mile-long dam.

• Somerset installed parking meters downtown. The mechanical money-grabbers were removed a few years ago after major businesses took flight to the “truck route.”

• John Sherman Cooper, whose statue commands Fountain Square, was first elected to the U.S. Senate.

• A loaf of Marvel bread could be bought for 13 cents at A & P.



January 1958:

• General Telephone Company announced it would spend $1.2 million to install dial telephones in Pulaski County. At the time, a caller gave a number to a live operator and she made the connection with a ring.

• Pulaski County Judge Herbert Todd was elected to a full, four-year term. He is the father of Frey Todd, mayor of Eubank, and the elder Todd later served with his son as a member of the Eubank Town Board.

• R.C. Tarter was sworn in as circuit judge of the 28th Judicial District. Russell Jones took the oath as commonwealth’s attorney.

• The state let a contract to build a causeway to Bunker Hill Island, site of a proposed state park. One of the top stories of 2007 was a continuing struggle to get a lodge built on General Burnside Island State Park.

• A lady’s all-wool coat was priced at $12 at United Department Store.



January 1968:

• Gov. Louie B. Nunn described the condition of the state’s finances as “depressing.” The statement has a familiar ring. Steve Beshear, Kentucky’s new governor, used “critical” to assess the state’s financial condition in 2008.

-- Judge R.C. Tartar, opening the January 1968 term of Pulaski Circuit Court, declared crime as a greater menace to Pulaski County than Russia or Red China. Judge Tartar’s “charge to the grand jury” was a media event at the beginning of each court session.

-- Burley tobacco set a record price of $71.48 per hundred on the Somerset Tobacco Market.

-- Ice and snow slowed traffic early in the year.

-- At Food Fair, 5 pounds of sugar sold for 39 cents and a 1-pound can of Maxwell House coffee was priced at 59 cents.

January 1978:

-- Somerset Mayor Dearl Whitaker eyed a sweeping annexation plan that would bring into the corporate limits an area north to Norwood Stretch, west to near Fishing Creek Bridge, south to near Burnside, and east to Sugar Hill. Pulaski Judge-Executive Jacob V. Garner vowed to fight the city’s annexation plan and the matter eventually ended up in court. To date, a growing Soberest is still squeezed by corporate lines.

-- Burley actions saw tobacco sales reach an average of $122.46 per 100 pounds.

-- Magistrates on Pulaski Fiscal Court asked for an audit of all moneys distributed by the county during the last half of 1977.

-- Ground beef sold for 79 cents a pound at Winn-Dixie.

January 1988:

-- Pulaski County considered annexing Jabez because the community was cut off from Russell County by Lake Cumberland. Politics got in the way and twenty years have passed and it hasn’t happened.

-- Congressman Hal Rogers ballyhooed a rural development center. This became reality and The Center for Rural Development in Somerset electronically links counties in southern and eastern Kentucky with the world.

-- Cumberland Wood and Chair Corporation hired an additional 60 workers, increasing its work force to nearly 600.

-- University of Kentucky Wildcat basketball team remained undefeated after nine games under Coach Eddie Sutton and was ranked No. 1 in the country. The latest edition of the Wildcats have lost half a dozen games during the first third of the season and Big Blue Nation is in a “Winter of Discontent.”

January 1998:

-- Six-lane U.S. 27 was under construction between Ky. 80 and Oak Hill Road. Plans were moving ahead to extend the six lanes to Somerset Boat Dock Road, and eventually through Burnside to the entrance of General Burnside Island State Park.

-- JP Wiles, a former magistrate on Pulaski Fiscal Court, filed as a candidate for mayor of Somerset. He was one of 105 candidates to file for office subject to 1998 local elections.

-- Lowe’s of Somerset superstore opened January 28, 1998.

January 2008:

Hey! Wait a minute! The year has just begun. We have no crystal ball. It’s not fair to ask. However, based on past performances, locals can be assured that Somerset and Pulaski County will continue to grow, prosper, fuss, fight and even “law” each other.

        

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