My great-great-great-grandfather’s farm, originally christened “Mt. Pleasant” in the early 19th century, was renamed “Klondike” in the late-19th century, when one of his grandchildren headed to Alaska with dreams of striking it rich in the Klondike goldfields. We have a box of crumbling letters he wrote home to his mother, assuring her of his good health, and also recounting stories of his new friend Jack London. Unfortunately, no riches accompanied his time in the goldfields, only many interesting tales, and a new name for his childhood home.
Ready to seek gold? There’s a manual for that!
My interest was immediately piqued, then, by Gold City, a crossroads community in Simpson County, Kentucky. I rolled into Gold City ahead of a huge thunderstorm, and gathered many odd looks from the patrons at the very busy Gold City Grocery Store. It’s so rare to find a crossroads store still in operation, and not sliding into a romantic ruin, that I fear I clapped my hands together in glee! I would have looked askance at myself as well…
The Gold City Store was a abuzz with activity.
Gold City is located six and a half miles east of the county seat of Franklin, located at the intersection of KY 265 and 622. The story is that while digging a well, some rocks were uncovered that appeared to be “gold-bearing.” This caused a tiny furor of excitement in Simpson County before the discovery that the rocks were, after all, worthless and just – rocks. The post office in Temperance (echoes of Carrie Nation?) was moved to Gold City on February 8, 1886. The post office closed in 1909.
Gold City (and the evocatively named Temperance as well – I love their proximity to one another – there MUST be a story there), on a 1921 topographic quad mad.
A historic marker in Gold City recounts the three days in September 1862 that Captain N.B. Forrest’s CSA Calvary camped nearby at the farm of a Union sympathizer named Stephen Barnes. (I imagine that was a tense situation.) A month later, these men would move onto Perryville, Kentucky, and there are many scholars better equipped than I to tell the story of that bloody conflict and strategic victory for the Union.
Two of the historic dwellings left in Gold City – a four bay bay Cumberland House on the left, and a modified T-plan house on the right.
Across from the Gold City Grocery store is the Gold City Mill, now no longer in business. The front gable mill building remains, as do metal grain bins and sheds. A friend of mine from nearby Warren County remembers his father going there to get a special feed for his livestock.
The Gold City Mill.
As I always do when I come across these fascinating places in Kentucky, I dig around for some history. I didn’t find much, and as I was trying to beat the storm and get to my destination, I failed to go into the store and just ask. I always get the best stories in places like that…The one item I turned up was in the June 8, 1907 edition of the Hopkinsville, Kentuckian. A small blurb recounted a tale of wickedness between those two wonderfully-named villages of Gold City and Temperance. Watch out for your vegetables!
Historic newspapers and tales of sneaks and destroyed plants…
Thank you so much for writing about Gold City outside Franklin,Ky. I grew up in Franklin, and I always knew where Gold City was., but I never knew how it got its name. I have lived in Virginia for 33 years, but I still have family in Simpson and Warren counties so I visit often. One of my husband’s friends is working the tobacco market out in Ky, and he asked me what the story was concerning Gold City. All I could tell him was that it was a small, rural community outside Franklin. I was looking for information on Gold City for this tobacco man when I stumbled across your article. Thank you so much for writing about a memory from my childhood.
I am glad you found my post and enjoyed it! Kentucky has so many interesting little crossroads communities, and I wish I could visit them all.