Experience history through the downtown walking tour

Tony Bishop portrays General Braddock during the Charles W. Logsdon Downtown Elizabethtown Historic Walking Tour.

Photos courtesy of Amanda Oliver

Have your ever wondered what Elizabethtown was like 150 years ago? Or have you ever thought about the people who lived here before the automobile? What about the men and women who founded the town, or who built the roads and the railroads that we enjoy today?

If you have ever pondered these questions, then you are in luck. All of your questions will be answered by the very persons who lived and worked here long ago.

You will see and hear Aunt Beck Hill, as she tells you about the roads and railroads, and how they got here and what it was like to run a hotel in the 1850s.

You also will see Phillip Arnold himself, tell how he hoodwinked some of the nation’s most successful businessmen out of millions of dollars, and then he will tell you how he got away with it.

You will hear Ms. Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, tell of her travels from Europe to America and through the hills of Kentucky to Elizabethtown. Tomorrow, she will take the stagecoach on her way to Louisville where she is scheduled to perform. Oh, and you’ll her sing a bit before she boards the carriage and is off again.

If that sounds like something you would like to do, then the Charles W. Logsdon Downtown Elizabethtown Historic Walking Tour is for you. The Walking Tour brings history to life with the characters just mentioned and more sharing with you the stories of their life.

They stand before you clothed in buckskins, and in calico and lace, wearing leather and top hats, pioneers, inn keepers, slaves, freedmen and gentlemen and ladies all, coming together to transport you back in time to the beginning of the county and commonwealth.

The Walking Tour was first performed in the summer of 1988, and it will continue for its 37th season this summer. Every Thursday, at approximately 7 p.m. from June through the first Thursday in September, long time politician and community leader Samuel Haycraft Jr. will arrive in the northwest corner of the square with an invitation for you to join him in a search for conversation.

While on the walking tour, you stroll through the streets and alleys of the downtown. It is at this point that you realize that you are walking in the footsteps of U.S. presidents, generals, scoundrels and scallywags, heroes and heroines.

One by one, they appear to tell their stories in the cool of the evening until it’s time to go. Once the last story has been told, you will notice that the characters are standing in a row on the public square, hoping to shake your hand and thank you for coming to see them this night.

When you return to your car, you realize that it’s 2025 again, but now you know a little more about how we got here and who did what to frame Hardin County, the commonwealth and our country into the world we live in today.

Come see the Charles W. Logsdon Downtown Elizabethtown Historic Walking Tour every Thursday night at 7 p.m. from the first Thursday in June through Sept. 5. Meet us at the north west corner of the square in Elizabethtown.