Maysville — Kentucky | Shared Latitude

An Ohio River town of brick storefronts and old tobacco warehouses that once outranked Cincinnati as a river port, and still carries the singer Rosemary Clooney's name on a theater marquee downtown. Lia and I wandered the floodwall murals until the light went and the whole riverfront turned the color of the water.

Maysville was founded in 1787 as a landing point for settlers pushing into Kentucky’s interior, and for much of the nineteenth century it rivaled Cincinnati as a river port, its warehouses stacked with tobacco, hemp, and bourbon bound downriver. That prosperity left behind a downtown of ornate cast-iron storefronts and brick warehouses that has survived largely intact, and a floodwall built after the Ohio’s repeated rampages now doubles as a canvas — murals stretching for blocks depicting the town’s steamboat era, its role in the Underground Railroad, and its more famous native daughters and sons.

The floodwall murals and downtown

We walked the length of the floodwall murals slowly, each panel telling a different slice of Maysville history, from Daniel Boone’s early passage through the region to the tobacco auctions that once defined the local economy. Just off the river, the Russell Theatre’s marquee still bears the name of Rosemary Clooney, the singer and actress born here in 1928, and the town’s small museum dedicated to her keeps her stage costumes and recordings on permanent display. Lia, who’d never heard of Clooney before that afternoon, left humming “Come On-A My House” for the rest of the trip.

A colorful historical mural depicting steamboats along the Ohio River floodwall in Maysville, Kentucky

Old warehouses and the river

Down along the water, a row of nineteenth-century tobacco and hemp warehouses has been slowly converted into shops, event spaces, and a distillery or two, their brick facades still stamped with faded painted signage from businesses that closed decades ago. We watched the sun drop behind the Ohio from a bench on the floodwall, barges moving slow downriver toward Cincinnati, the same route this town’s tobacco once traveled by steamboat.

Restored nineteenth-century brick tobacco warehouses along the riverfront in Maysville, Kentucky

Getting There

Maysville is about an hour east of Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) via US-68 and AA Highway. A car is essential — there’s no rail or bus service into town — but the drive along the Ohio River bluffs is a scenic reward in itself.