Fudging the Data

Two summers ago, I happened across a Wikipedia article about an alleged ghost town in Kentucky what go by name of Fudge.

I don't remember exactly what I was doing that afternoon, but I was probably tussling with stuff relating to my multiple pastimes of theatre, painting, music, writing, eating, and drinking, and hastily whipped up a quickie UnK post basically relaying the info that this Wikipedia page about this ghost town existed. And then wandered off in search of adventure.

Now, two years later, it has come to my attention that - shockeroo - Wikipedia just might be a load of baloney. I know for a fact they're consistently wrong about a number of subjects (including myself!) and I've heard some rumblings on the web that this Fudge article is a fabrication from start to finish.

Unfortunately, these rumblings come from places like the dreaded Topix, which is one of those typical internet message boards where angry people bicker with one another endlessly about nothing. Still, if the people in the Hickman area are all saying they've never ever heard of this "Fudge" place, it makes me wonder.

The usda.gov link that the Wikipedia page provides as a source for the Fudge article contains, in fact, no mention of a Fudge, KY. And some Flaming Lips fans have stated that, contrary to the article, there is no such thing as a video for the song "Chrome Plated Suicide".

Does anyone else have any evidence for this fabled Fudge other than this increasingly suspect Wikipedia article?

Mine 18

McCreary County's Mine 18 was operated by the Stearns Coal and Lumber Company from 1937 to 1962, in the now-defunct town of Blue Heron. The community originally stood on the banks of the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River.

For many years, Blue Heron remained a "ghost town" as its few remaining buildings quickly fell into disrepair and collapsed. But in the 1980s, a strange project to rebuild Blue Heron as closely as possible was enacted, and now visitors can travel to what amounts to an enormous full-scale museum replica of a Kentucky coal town as it looked during its heyday. Most of the buildings are only empty shells meant to be viewed from the exterior, and are referred to on the National Park Service website as "ghost buildings".

Unfortunately, you can't go exploring deep into the mines, which to me would be a lot more interesting than seeing a fake coal tipple. Someone should open some sort of underground resort in a Kentucky mine; if not this one, then perhaps the abandoned mines in Boonesboro.


You can see photos of Blue Heron the way it was back in the day by clicking here, and also note the photo gallery of the nearby town of No Business, KY with plenty of nice abandoned buildings.

Paradise

The John Prine song "Paradise" - which has been performed by everyone from Dwight Yoakam to Jimmy Buffett to Jackie DeShannon to Hayseed Dixie - is actually about a real Kentucky coal town by the name of Paradise.

Well, it was a real town, anyway. Now its a ghost town, having been defunct since 1967, Very little of it remains today, joining the list of other Kentucky cities-now-gone including Cannel City, Fudge, and Scuffletown.

Click here for photos of the old Paradise in its glory days, on muhlenbergcountyky.com. Their photo above shows Green River Boats at Paradise, circa 1900.

Scuffletown

Another of Kentucky's Ghost Towns is Henderson County's Scuffletown, which is on the Kentucky-Indiana border along the Ohio River, just above the mouth of Green River.

According to the 1976 book The Annals and Scandals of Henderson County by Maralea Arnett, Scuffletown was built up around a tavern/trading post run by one Jonathan Thomas Stott. "Since he kept a good supply of liquor, it became a rendezvous for flatboatmen and others on the river. Often a general fight developed after several hours of drinking and the place received the name of Scuffletown."

A tobacco-processing operation in Scuffletown was quite successful, exporting 400 to 450 hogsheads of tobacco per year to Europe, for pipe tobacco and nasal snuff.

According to them there Wikipedia folks:

The site witnessed numerous Civil War-era activities. It may have been the intended target of a raid by a handful of Confederate cavalrymen from Tennessee led by Captain Jake Bennett. It was Colonel's Johnson set up his cannon a few miles below Scuffletown to take Newburgh. The Silver Lake No. 2, a sternwheel packet (steamboat) weighing some 129 tons and outfitted with six cannons capable of firing 24 pound shot, stopped at Scuffletown during its patrols of the Ohio. In 1863, eight Union companies of infantry and one company of artillery were stationed at Scuffletown to protect the area of Confederate raiders. Scuffletown is mentioned in the Civil War account Operations of the Mississippi Squadron during Morgan's Raid.

In 1893 the Southern Cherokee Nation were welcomed to Kentucky in Scuffletown and recognized as an Indian tribe by Governor John Y. Brown. The Southern Cherokee is still living on the Green River today.

The 1913 flood greatly devastated the city, causing a mass exodus that they never recovered from. Its post office closed permanently the following year. An even larger flood in 1937 decimated what was left, and a vast chunk of real estate has sat inexplicably deserted ever since. There's been talk for a decade about having it declared a protected wetland and setting up a national wildlife refuge there, but so far not much has happened.

Cannel City

Today I received some nice photos from fellow seeker-of-creepiness David Domine, who says:

"I was doing some research in eastern Kentucky a couple of weekends ago, and I drove through this weird little town, Cannel City, which turns out to be one of Kentucky's ghost towns. (I read your post about Fudge, but don't know if you'd heard of this one...)

I found this info about it online."

From that link, we learn:

A type of coal high in volatile constituents and thus burning brightly, cannel coal was once prized as a fuel used in lighting homes and businesses: and so in 1910, the coal veins in this patch of Morgan County in central Kentucky were a significant commercial commodity, enough to warrant a large mining operation, the importation of hundreds of miners, a special railroad (the Ohio and Kentucky Junction-Cannel City line), and a bit later a major chemical plant operated by the Pearsite Company. With all this, Cannel City prospered: churches, a bank, an elegant hotel.

The usefulness of cannel coal, however, declined once coal gas, then electric lighting, became commonplace.

Fudge, KY

Ever heard of of Fudge, KY (not to be confused with Kentucky Fudge)? It's now said to be a ghost town, but it reportedly was once a small community in Fulton County, approximately 4 miles southwest of Hickman.

According to Wikipedia:

A small town in the 1850s and 1860s with a population of less than 50, Fudge was abandoned after a few years after settlers determined that the land was inarable. Poor drainage and salinity on the site rendered the soil inadequate to support sustained farming cycles. The earth beneath the site is rich in limestone, with collapsing (slowly dissolving) caverns beneath.

Several of Fudge's abandoned farmhouses and structures still stand today, and have served as a backdrop for several rock band videos, including The Flaming Lips' "Chrome Plated Suicide" and Big Red Bouncer's "Animal Child".