The Singing Bridge Frankfort, humming along. Get the Five

Frankfort Then

A little history, with receipts

Three short pieces about how this town got to be the way it is. Each one lists its sources, so you can dig deeper or tell us we got it wrong.

1780–1910

How Frankfort got the capital: the nails did it

You’ll hear it called a compromise between Lexington and Louisville. The historical marker near the Capitol tells it plainer: Frankfort put in the best offer.

First, the name. This spot in the river’s S-curve was called Franks Ford, after Stephen Frank, who was killed there in 1780. James Wilkinson got Virginia’s approval to lay out a town in 1786, and in 1792 he sold his Frankfort land to Andrew Holmes.

That same year, brand-new Kentucky named five commissioners to choose a permanent seat of government. Lexington, Louisville, Leestown, Petersburg, Delany’s Ferry, Legerwood’s Bend and Frankfort all made bids. According to early histories, Holmes offered his log house as the capitol for seven years, along with town lots, £50 worth of locks and hinges, 10 boxes of glass, 1,500 pounds of nails and $3,000 in gold.

The commissioners recommended Frankfort on Dec. 5, 1792, and the legislature approved it three days later. Lawmakers met in Holmes’ house until the first capitol was finished in 1794. That one burned in 1813, and the legislature considered moving. Donations from Frankfort folks kept it here. The second capitol was finished in 1816 and burned in 1824. The third, the Greek Revival building on Broadway we now call the Old State Capitol, was used for about 80 years. The current Capitol in South Frankfort came into use in 1910.

The moral: never underestimate a town that shows up with nails.

Sources: KHS Historical Marker #1774 · “Frankfort Chosen as Capital,” ExploreKYHistory

1894–today

The Singing Bridge, and why it went quiet

The bridge that carries St. Clair Street over the Kentucky River to Bridge Street was built by the King Bridge Company in 1894. It started out with a timber deck. In the 1930s that was replaced with an open steel grid, and the grid is what sings: tires rolling over steel grating make the hum the bridge is named for. Sidewalks came later.

It’s one of the oldest bridges in the state, and it was the last of its kind still carrying cars. Age caught up with it. A 2022 inspection set a 4-ton weight limit. On Aug. 30, 2024, after a routine inspection found serious deterioration in the steel, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet closed it to cars and people alike. It had been carrying about 3,400 vehicles a day.

After months of study, the state decided the only safe way to keep a river crossing downtown is to take the old bridge down and build a new one in the same spot, with sidewalks. Preliminary design is underway. As of this summer, KYTC expected the project to go out for bids in fall 2027, and it says that could change.

The harder part of the story

Two Black men from Frankfort, Marshall Boston and John Maxey, were taken from their jail cells by white mobs and lynched at the bridge: Boston on Aug. 15, 1894, and Maxey on June 3, 1909. No one was ever prosecuted. In October 2022, after three years of work by Focus on Race Relations and the Equal Justice Initiative, a historical marker was unveiled at the bridge, and the mayor and the county judge-executive apologized to the two men’s families. First Baptist Church on St. Clair dropped its old tagline, “at the Singing Bridge,” once its congregation learned this history.

We named this site after the sound the bridge made. The men who were killed there should be named here too.

Sources: The State Journal, Oct. 9, 2024 · KYTC closure notice via Franklin County, Aug. 30, 2024 · KYTC Singing Bridge Replacement Project · The State Journal, Oct. 23, 2022 · Equal Justice Initiative

1845

Daniel Boone’s grave, probably

Daniel Boone was born in Pennsylvania in 1734, spent decades exploring and settling Kentucky, moved to Missouri in 1799 and died there in 1820. He was buried on a family farm in Warren County, Missouri. Then Frankfort came calling.

By the 1840s, park-like cemeteries were the fashion, and some enterprising Frankfort people wanted one. As a Kentucky Historical Society historian told WAVE 3 News in 2003, they needed “a celebrity to sell plots.” A Kentucky delegation persuaded the Boone family, and the remains of Daniel and his wife, Rebecca, were reburied in the Frankfort Cemetery on Sept. 13, 1845. The Commonwealth put up a monument in 1860, and carved scenes from the Boones’ lives were added in 1862.

The catch: Boone’s relatives said that when he was buried in 1820, there was already another grave next to Rebecca’s, so Daniel was laid at her feet. That has fueled a long argument over whether the right man made the trip to Kentucky. A plaster cast of the skull, made when the remains arrived, was studied years later, and the results were inconclusive. Short of DNA testing, which nobody has scheduled, we may never know.

Either way, the grave has one of the best views of the river and the Capitol in town. Go see it in daylight.

Sources: KHS Marker #113 · KHS Marker #576 · ExploreKYHistory · WAVE 3 News, 2003