A Gem of Diversity
Western Kentucky town of Marion offers a wealth of interesting options

On a May visit to Western Kentucky I’d missed a tornado by a mere eight miles the previous night and was ready for a bit of peaceful meandering. The morning sun peeked briefly from behind snowy cumulus clouds as I topped a lush, green hill on US60 and had to brake to fall in behind a black buggy sporting a bright orange slow-moving vehicle triangle. I couldn’t have picked a better spot to unwind than Marion and its environs.

Named for the famous Revolutionary War General Francis Marion, known as The Swamp Fox, this Renaissance Kentucky Silver City of 3,500 friendly souls opens its arms to two culturally diverse neighbors, boasts a world-class mineral collection and has a free Ohio River ferry nearby with history that’ll make your hair stand on end.

This history is in sharp contrast to the peaceful landscape created by 15 Old Order Amish families who moved to Crittenden County in 1977. Their community has grown to around 400 members now. Their sturdy houses dot rich, rolling farmland where road signs announce home industries – quilts, farm-fresh eggs, dairy goats, horseshoeing and tack, bentwood rockers, cedar and treated pine lawn furniture, handmade cabinets, goldfish, Chihuahua puppies, homemade butter, bread and fried pies. Many Amish farmers also sell their produce at the Marion Farmers’ Market from April through October.

A variety store I peeked into lived up to its name, with necessities from homemade apple butter, birdhouses and horse halters to ladies’ bonnets, practical shoes, and bolt after bolt of plain-hued fabric. Clouds had rolled in and I perused the wooden shelves in the electricity-free establishment in half-light, intrigued by overheard conversations. According to Jeanne Hodge, executive director of the Crittenden County Chamber of Commerce, most visitors are curious.

“Amish is a way of life and a religion,” she explained. “At various times of the year, they welcome visitors warmly but basically, they have to work the farm. So during planting season and harvesting, for example, they’ll be busy. The Amish don’t mind you driving through. The roads are public. You can take photos of the farms and the buggies but not of their faces because they don’t want any self-promoting.”

Crittenden County’s Amish country stretches from Marion to the Ohio River. You can take in this enthralling culture on byways like twisty two-lane Turkey Knob Road any time with a map from the Chamber of Commerce. Or for an ethnic double header, come to Marion the last weekend in April for the annual Back Roads Tour and annual Powwow, when you can learn about the Amish community and the Mantle Rock Cherokees.

In 1838 the U.S. government evicted 16,000 Cherokee Indians from their homes and forced them on a 116-day march to new lands in Texas and Oklahoma, in what became known as the Trail of Tears. Along the way, some 4,000 Cherokee died. A number of the original 13 groups passed through Kentucky, some wintering under overhangs at Mantle Rock, near the present day town of Joy in Livingston County, as they waited for the Ohio River to thaw. Knowing that the frigid weather would be especially hard on their children, many gave their youngsters to families living along the route.

“A lot of people around here say their great grandmother was full-blooded Cherokee, but they can’t trace their ancestry back any farther,” said Barbara Gillihan, a board member of the Mantle Rock Native Education & Cultural Center. Opened in late 2002 in downtown Marion, the center plans the yearly powwow, publishes an online newsletter for schools and kids (www.turtle-tracks.org), offers genealogy workshops and educational and craft programs, and sells Native American art and crafts.

In addition to sacred gravesites, Mantle Rock is home to a native American village site over one thousand years old and several unique indigenous plants. Though the Nature Conservancy has owned the 377-acre tract it lies on since the late 1980’s, the Mantle Rock Cherokees seek permanent guardianship (they now hold temporary guardianship) to protect gravesites from ongoing looting, to improve public accessibility and to preserve the spiritual nature of the area, which is rife with what are probably Hopewell-Adena mounds.

Preservation of another kind is visible at the Ben E. Clement Mineral Museum. From 1900 to 1953, Marion was the world’s leading producer of fluorite, the magic ingredient in toothpaste, Teflon et al. Involved in fluorite mining for more a quarter of a century, Clements accumulated the world’s largest and finest collection of fluorite specimens, which range from a fraction of an ounce to hundreds of pounds.

Lest you think this is just a building full of rocks, trust me, this is no ho-hum attraction. In addition to fluorite crystals in an awesome array of colors and patterns, the collection has nearly 3,000 samples of fluorescent minerals. In ordinary light these look to be common gray rocks, but when the room lights go off, black lights paint splashes of brilliant neon greens, reds, oranges and purples that signify minerals within.

Still more scintillating history lies within a cave just across the Ohio in Illinois. Only 13 miles down the road, you can catch the last operating free ferry between Kentucky and Illinois for a short ride to Cave-In-Rock State Park. Hike lovely wooded trails up to bluffs that overlook the Ohio River 60 feet below, to the looming Cave-In-Rock, an 18th and 19th century hideout for murderers and ruthless river pirates who lured unsuspecting travelers to an untimely end. A former officer in George Washington’s army converted it to a tavern in 1797, then sent his henchmen out to commit robbery and often murder. More recently, the 55-foot-wide cavern appeared in “How the West Was Won.”

Marion celebrates all facets of its history every year come the third weekend of October during Heritage Days. The downtown comes alive with music, street plays, auctions and vendors selling everything from those yummy, oh-so-bad-for-you funnel cakes on down.

As long as you’re eating, be sure to stop into the wildly-popular Thom’s Sweet Shoppe & Café right on the Court Square, where you can get lunch for less than five bucks, fresh-squeezed lemonade and desserts that’ll send you down memory lane. Proprietor Thom Hawthorne so fondly remembered the soda fountain of his youth in the 1905 City Drug Store that he bought it.

“It was neat coming in here as a kid,” he recently reminisced, leaning against the original soda fountain more than a century old. “They always had the best milk shakes and ice cream sodas in town. We still do, because we make’ em just like they did years ago.” Come by Thom’s any Saturday morning to catch up on all the latest Marion “dirt” from the Steel Magnolias, a group of ladies who’ve been chatting and chewing there “for years.”

For more manly talk, you can hobnob with hunters at the Lafayette Heights Clubhouse, which bills itself as a “bed and breakfast and hunter’s headquarters.” Both Land Between the Lakes and Ballard County Wildlife Management Area are nearby, and spell paradise for folks in search of fish and game. With six guestrooms, a hunters’ bunkhouse and a honeymoon suite with a Jacuzzi, the Clubhouse serves a hearty Saturday morning breakfast during the various hunting seasons. No pirates allowed.

Katherine Tandy Brown is a staff writer for The Lane Report.
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