HUD HOMEBUYING: Cox’s Creek Kentucky

Cox’s Creek KY: Nelson County

A Short Drive to Horse Racing and Baseball History

Just a long Louisville Slugger hit (38 miles) from Louisville, Cox’s Creek KY got its start when Pennsylvania’s Colonel Isaac Cox built a “fort” (more of a “block house”) on the site in 1775 just before heading off to fight in the Revolutionary War. (Interesting history trivia: Isaac later would become the last white man to be killed by Indians during the time of the great Indian wars in what is now Kentucky.)

With less than an hour separating Cox’s Creek Kentucky from Louisville, visitors to the area have a true cornucopia of activities from which to choose.

Love horse racing? Louisville is home to the internationally famous Churchill Downs, home to the Kentucky Derby each May.

Of course, the baseball fans in your vacationing party will have to make a trip to the Louisville Slugger Museum. (The museum is easy to see – there’s a multi-story bat on the outside). The company got its start when J. Frederick Hillerich emigrated with his family from Baden-Baden, Germany to the United States in 1842 and started a woodworking shop in 1854. J. Frederick’s son, Bud, born a few years later, grew up to play baseball and apprenticed in his father’s shop. He made his own baseball bats there.

The company’s legend – which is disputed by baseball scholars – has it that Bud made the first bat for a professional ball player (Pete Browning, a star on Louisville’s American Association team) in 1884 Browning – who had a nickname of the “Louisville Slugger” – got three hits with the white ash bat the first game he used it.

Louisville also has one of the largest park systems in America. Many, in fact, were designed by famed architect Frederick Law Olmstead.

Since you’ve made the trip from Coxs Creek KY to Louisville, you also should wander over to downtown and Old Louisville. The third-largest historic preservation district in the country is sometimes called “America’s Victorian Treasure” and consists of Victorian churches, homes, bed and breakfasts, schools, parks and thousands of grand homes. Old Louisville was created in the 1870s through the early 1900s as Louisville’s first suburb.

The drive to Louisville from Cox Creek Kentucky is also well worth it to see the Thomas Edison House, which was the inventor’s home in 1866-1869. A good portion of the work that earned him an astounding 1,093 patents is displayed there. In addition, hands-on exhibits include artifacts related to Edison’s invention of the light bulb, phonograph and the movie projector, as well as his enhancements of the telegraph and telephone.

What about more horse history? Visit the Derby Museum, which is full of history and facts about this wonderful annual event. You can even sit in on an interactive exhibit which has you getting a little big of the feel for some of what a jockey goes through in the ride around the track.