Home on the River: Morgantown, Butler County hope for bright future
Published 6:00 am Friday, March 29, 2024
BUTLER COUNTY — Morgantown and surrounding Butler County is no metropolis, but those who live there would call that a blessing.
Census data estimates the county population is just over 12,000 — around 29 residents per square mile — yet it offers more than your typical small-town community: free weekday transit, multiple annual festivals, aerospace manufacturing and more.
Lifetime resident Billy Phelps worked in the town’s police department for over two decades, serving as chief of police in 2007 until retiring in 2012.
Phelps and his wife wanted a change of pace in their new phase of life. They sold everything and found a condo in Panama Beach facing the ocean, living the dream of many American retirees.
He lasted six months.
“I was sitting on our balcony, she comes out and I said, ‘We need to talk,’ ” Phelps recalled. “I said, ‘I want to go home and run for office.’ ”
She asked if he was out of his mind — with some colorful language, he joked — but Phelps was adamant. He said he “may not be able to win anything, but I feel like I’ve got more to give.”
Phelps learned then-Mayor of Morgantown, Linda Keown, would not be seeking re-election, adding that he would not have wanted to challenge her if she had.
“That same night, my wife posted on her Facebook page, ‘We’re coming home, he’s running for mayor,’ ” Phelps said. “I got back in the city limits one week before the deadline, (…) I ran and here we are.”
Phelps began as Morgantown’s ninth mayor in 2015 and has since become the second-longest serving in the town’s history.
His office is packed with mementos from from his time in the Marines, law enforcement and growing up local. Phelps likes history, and he likes sharing Morgantown’s.
Butler County was carved out of Logan and Ohio counties in 1810. Its namesake, Gen. Richard Butler, served in the American Revolution and was killed in 1791 during the Northwest Indian War, according to author Lois Russ in The Kentucky Encyclopedia, published in 1992.
The first local settlers were Richard Dellium and James Forgy, who landed near Berry’s Lick in 1786. Phelps said many of its early settlers were veterans given land by the U.S. government in exchange for their service.
Morgantown, known then as “Morgan” or “Morgan Town,” was selected as the county seat in 1810 under the purview of Gov. Charles Scott.
The source of the town’s namesake remains unclear. Phelps said the name comes from Revolutionary War General Daniel Morgan, though Russ wrote it may have been named after a local hunter or the first child born there, Daniel Morgan Smith, in 1811.
Salt production made up much of the county’s early industry. By the 1830s, Russ wrote, the town of Morgan had 76 inhabitants.
Construction of locks and dams along the Green River in the 1830s drastically reshaped the landscape.
“Barges and steamboats on the Green River carried goods to market and provided mail service. Showboats brought entertainment to river towns,” Russ wrote. “Slate mined at Indigo Bend on the Green River, 11 miles from (Morgan), was used to make school writing tablets.”
Morgan, as well as the communities of Rochester and Woodbury, became “busy river towns” with the influx of travel. The onset of the Civil War eventually “slowed development and divided citizenry” despite relatively few nearby skirmishes, Russ wrote.
Butler County resident Granville Allen became one of the first Union soldiers killed in western Kentucky in an 1861 skirmish.
Following the war, veterans of the Union and Confederacy raised money for a monument listing the names of locals who fought on each side. It was dedicated in 1907 and sits outside the county courthouse to this day.
The county wrestled with a decline in steamboat travel as railroads neared their height, but the Green River remained a lifeline for many.
A 1962 issue of the Central City Times-Argus newspaper featured an account of a typical “packet” boat experience by W.H. Baker, later republished in author Agnes Harralson’s 1981 book, “Steamboats on the Green.”
“Often a party was made up as a social affair, with dancing every night on the boat. Merchants from Bowling Green, Russellville and Glasgow would go to Louisville on the boat, buy merchandise for their stores, and bring it home on the boat with them,” Baker said.
Ornate showboats quickly rose to prominence along the Green River, traveling up and down via towboat and entertaining wherever they went. The sound of calliopes, a steam organ popularized by traveling shows, often signaled its approach from miles away.
“(Locals) heard the calliope for miles and walked from crude log cabins far out in the country — people with large families who knew only the hard work of a day-to-day struggle for existence — people who had never heard better music than a squeaky old fiddle or the chanting kind of music heard at the camp meetings in summer,” Harralson wrote.
“They would walk for miles just to see and hear the showboat, and never set foot aboard. The manager usually had a little free show and band music outside before the main performance began.”
By 1900, Morgan’s population reached nearly 600, making it the largest community in the county.
Disaster struck in 1917 when the Green River froze solid for roughly two months, largely cutting off Morgan from supplies and deliveries.
“Perhaps as a result of this, the 1920s were a decade of road building, with the first hard-surface road (KY 403) built in 1926,” Russ wrote. “In 1930 the road from (Morgan) to Bowling Green was built and provided an important economic connection.”
By the 1930s, road travel had begun overtaking river traffic. The creation of US 231 in 1949 furthered its decline.
Butler County High School was completed in 1952 and the Green River Parkway connected the county to the nationwide interstate system in 1970, roughly coinciding with the creation of the town’s industrial park.
Morgan lacked a mayor until the 1950s, when Kentucky legislators mandated a city classification system. By accident, the move also solidified the town’s modern name.
“The State General Assembly sent it back ‘Morgantown’ as one word,” Phelps said. “The city didn’t officially become ‘Morgantown’ — the state made it Morgantown.”
Phelps said Morgantown struggled financially in the following decades. The city had roughly $250,000 in its account when he took over in 2015, he said, putting the city on the brink of bankruptcy.
“My very first meeting is the ‘State of the City’ address, and I called it my ‘Gloom and Doom’ speech, because I had to tell the council and the community (that) if we don’t make immediate changes, there will not be a city here this time next year,” Phelps said.
It took years of careful saving, planning and tax overhauls to turn finances around, largely fueled by millions-worth of grants focusing on attracting industry and tourism.
“Here we are today, the largest budget the city has ever had, completely solvent, doesn’t owe any debt, and we’re doing all kinds of events and things that we weren’t able to do before,” Phelps said.
Perhaps Morgantown’s most prominent event is the annual 4th of July Green River Catfish Festival, held since 1981, which brings a plethora of carnival rides, games, foods, vendors, arts and events to the city.
In 2019, festival attendees even set a world record — the largest paper ball fight in history. Over 1,000 paper wads, many crumbled by Phelps himself, were thrown by over 600 participants, earning the town recognition from Guinness World Records.
The town’s Holiday Hooplah, which held its third annual event last year in November, brought out over 5,000 guests to the city’s main street in 2023, Phelps said.
“If you watch a Hallmark movie, that’s what it’s compared to,” Phelps said. “We have a carnival with Ferris wheels in the background, we had almost 70 vendors this last time with 5,000 people, bands on Main Street or on stage performing during it.”
He added that September will bring the city’s first Hispanic Heritage celebration aimed at fostering more engagement with the town’s growing ethnic population.
“Everything we’ve done so far is paying back to the community, and we offer it for free,” Phelps said.
While the fun times are welcome, practicality is not a side thought. The city’s free MoGo transit system, which offers front-door shuttle pickup, served over 13,000 residents last year alone, Phelps said.
The program also offers free bike and kayak sharing to encourage locals and guests to explore the county’s various outdoor attractions.
Diverse industry helps keep the funding flowing. Phelps said Delta Faucet’s fabrication plant makes up a large chunk of local manufacturing, for example, and work continues on the industrial park’s Aerospace Composites Solutions facility worth $16.8 million.
Denetrea Henderson, president of the Morgantown-Butler County Chamber of Commerce since January, said the organization typically hosts one or two ribbon-cutting ceremonies each month.
“We definitely have a growing community,” Henderson said. “To me, what’s most heartwarming about a small town is the turnout that we get and the support for the businesses we see.”
Henderson said the chamber has increasingly focused on building back the community engagement lost from COVID-19 and an increasingly digital society.
“Everybody seems to know everybody, and that’s a good thing and a bad thing,” Henderson joked. “In this case, we’re trying to focus on the good by providing these events where we draw people out of their homes and routine while at the same time, spotlighting our businesses and products in the community.”
Henderson said many young people in small towns like Morgantown dream of moving off to somewhere bigger, but often find themselves missing home.
“Once you get married and have a family, you realize the sense of community that we have in Morgantown and any small town, and you find people coming back home,” she said.
By contrast, Henderson has spent her entire life in Morgantown and doesn’t plan to leave any time soon.
Sitting in her home office, Henderson can see the house she grew up in sitting just across the way — a fact she takes pride in.
“Everyone should have a small town that’s their home,” she said. “And if you don’t have that, we would love to help.”