Silver Run Ceramics in Boyd County combines the functional with the beautiful in its pottery. Doug Flynn basks in the scenic beauty and rich culture of Maysville. Walt’s Hitching Post is an iconic Fort Wright restaurant. Columbus-Belmont State Park memorializes the site of a Civil War battle that marked the rise of Ulysses S. Grant.
Silver Run Ceramics
Atop their hilltop farm in Catlettsburg, Michelle Strader and Frederick Bartolovic create functional ceramic ware embellished with detailed images of the animals that surround them. Bartolovic, a ceramics professor at Marshall University, throws the pieces, and Strader illustrates them.
“I think the artwork that we make draws on our individual strengths,” said Strader, “because he is more drawn to the construction of form. He has a very clean aesthetic. Where I’m much more organic and detail oriented, and sort of messy and layered in my techniques. So I think that creates a really nice balance.”
The two make platters, dinner plates, bowls, dessert plates, mugs, tumblers, as well as whiskey jugs. The couple’s work often features images of horses, rabbits, deer, or other creatures, inspired by their own farm or wildlife living in nearby fields and forests. Beyond that, Strader said, she is influenced by primitive art and folk art.
Strader and Bartolovic are interested in the cycle of life, predator and prey, which they see in nature around them.
“The bunny for me is a really important image, one that I’m very familiar with, that I’ve done many, many times,” Strader said. “He’s a constant character in our work. And I think that’s just because of how fragile a bunny’s life can be. They are almost given no defenses. They’re the very definition of an animal in flight. And we’ve definitely witnessed that here on the farm.”
The two have been gratified by their customers’ interest in local crafts. “Whether it’s the food in your refrigerator or the cups in your cabinet, a lot more individuals are interested in knowing who made those things, and where they came from,” Strader said.
Maysville
Kathleen and Lou Browning believe Maysville’s history and community spirit combine to make this Ohio River town special. Their home overlooks the town.
“The community has always had a vibrant interest in the arts,” Browning said.
Early on, traveling performers would stop in what was then Limestone on their way to and from Cincinnati and Lexington. “So we’ve had a long history of performers, John Philip Sousa’s band on the stage of the opera theater, all kinds of drama groups, local drama groups.”
Mrs. Browning’s world-renowned collection of miniatures has been showcased since 2007 at the Kentucky Gateway Museum Center in Maysville. She enjoys her view of the town below. “I stand at the edge of the yard and I look down. And I think it’s because of my relationship with miniatures that it means so much to me,” she said. “I look down and I see the town in miniature, … and recall all of these memories and fun things that we used to do,” she said.
The Kentucky Gateway Museum is near and dear to their hearts. Lou Browning’s grandfather served on the museum board, as did his father. Browning succeeded his father on the board in 1961 after his death.
“I can remember my father telling us he never really saw any reason to have a bigger Maysville, but he was always interested in having a better Maysville,” he said. “And without a doubt we’ve absorbed some of that kind of thinking.”
Walt’s Hitching Post
Walt’s Hitching Post in Fort Wright was founded by Walt Ballanger and his wife, Mary, in 1942. The restaurant is famous for its smokehouse ribs and signature secret sauce. Other menu staples include tomato garlic dressing, salted rye bread, skillet potatoes and mouth-watering steaks.
A new era began with owner Bill Melton, who ran the Hitching Post from 1958 until his death in 2008. This landmark restaurant reopened in 2012 under new owners Bronson Trebbi and Donny Arnsperger.
“Billy started as a parking lot attendant at the White Horse Café, which was up on Dixie Highway,” said Mike Mangeot, a former bartender. “He became aware that Walt Ballanger was retiring so he obtained a $400 loan…, and used that $400 to open the doors.”
Back in those days, dining out was a dress-up occasion, but Walt’s welcomed working people. “You could come in here in anything you had on,” recalled Judy Norton, who has been a server at Walt’s for 30 years.
Ezekial “Zeke” Jeffcoat Jr., head chef and sauce master at Walt’s, recalled how Melton would start a card game to keep the restaurant busy into the night. “When he’d see business dropping off a little bit, then he’d sit down and have a card game with one of his friends or something,” he said.
Walt’s Hitching Post was a favorite with the racetrack crowd. Melton purchased a horse himself and got into the business, Mangeot recalled. “He was very successful with one called On the Rib,” he said. “And it was a wonderful horse and made a lot of money.”
The restaurant still shares a log wall from the original cabin built at that location. The new owners have kept the horse theme throughout the restaurant, and have a room dedicated to Triple Crown winning jockey Steve Cauthen, a Northern Kentucky native.
The restaurant still has the outdoor smokehouse, where visitors often find a slab of ribs over a hardwood fire. “We season the ribs up here (at the restaurant), then we take them down here and hang them,” said Jeffcoat. “And let them cook down to get not fully cooked, but enough that when you bring them up here, you have room, because we still got to sauce them and everything. But you got to stay loose enough that you still have room to cook a little more when you put the sauce on.”
The restaurant is a tradition for generations of families. Norton said couples who came to Walt’s for their prom dinner or a wedding rehearsal dinner come back again with their own children. “There’s a corner at the end of the bar that was a booth, and a lot of people got engaged there,” she said.
Columbus-Belmont State Park
During the Civil War, Confederate troops made the Mississippi River town of Columbus in Hickman County one of the most heavily fortified areas in the country, earning the Kentucky town the title of “Gibraltar of the West.” The battle fought there in 1861 was the first combat test of the war for Union Gen. Ulysses Grant.
The Confederates wanted to hold the Mississippi River for their own. To that end, Confederate Gen. Leonidas Polk began fortifying the Columbus area. “The most important thing was the 180-foot bluff,” said historian John Ross. From there, cannonballs could sinks boats below.
“There were more heavy guns there and cannons than there were at Vicksburg or New Orleans during the entire war,” Ross said. Cindy Lynch, manager of the state park here, said that at its peak, the town was home to about 20,000 troops.
Polk’s fortifications prompted the Kentucky state government, which had been neutral, to side with the Union. Polk had five forts built and dug miles of trenches. “The park today is only 10 percent of the old Confederate trenches,” Ross noted.
Visitors today can still see the remnants of Polk’s most audacious idea: A massive chain across the Mississippi River to block passage of Union boats and supplies. The chain was a mile long and made of 20-pound links, “with that huge anchor you see in the park today buried in the ground to hold it on the Columbus side,” Ross said.
It was tied to two trees on the Missouri side of the river. The chain was supported by a series of barges, and in front of the chain were underwater mines, called torpedoes back then, Ross said.
Grant decided to launch an attack on the smaller Confederate outpost in neighboring Belmont, Mo., just across the river. During the resulting Battle of the Belmont on Nov. 7, 1861, Confederates bombarded Grant and his men using 140 cannons, including a giant, 15,000-pound Anderson Rifle known as “Lady Polk.” It could hit a target up to three miles away.
Both sides declared victory. Ultimately, Grant chose to move past the heavily fortified Columbus. His thinking? “It’s got too many cannons, too many men. So let’s go around it,” according to historian Ross.
Grant took his troops south, drawing the Confederates after him. Grant captured Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Tennessee, “and forced the evacuation of Columbus without firing a shot,” Ross said.
Years later, the town of Columbus was ruined in the floods of 1927, when 450 feet of the river bank was lost. The American Red Cross decided in 1927 that it was cheaper and easier to move to whole town up on the bluff. When the floodwaters receded, Polk’s giant chain was rediscovered. From there, the idea took hold to establish a state park to remember the long-ago battle.
“It’s a very important time in history, and people are surprised because it’s not well known,” said park manager Lynch.
