wake of Daniel Boone through the Cumber-
land Gap.
"Here was this woodland pasture ecosys-
tem, all this freshwater, all these springs,"
Price explains. "The land was also on a mi-
gratory path of the buffalo. So they set up a
fort, they made peace and war with Native
Americans as they're coming through. One
of the first camps was actually round here—
set up by the Bowman family."
In time the town founded the first uni-
versity west of the Allegheny Mountains:
Transylvania, literally "through the woods".
But the pioneers had kept going and—in
contrast with Louisville, which had built up
from portage required around a fall in the
Ohio River—Lexington found itself limited
by a want of navigable water during the
Industrial Revolution.
"So it maintained as an agricultural-based
trading outpost," Price says. "Our cash crop
was tobacco, otherwise corn and cattle,
with horses really just a pastime. But it's al-
ways had this really good land to raise graz-
