By Byron Crawford
The small comunity of Seventy Six in Clinton County is not about to let the 250th birthday of the USA pass without a celebration.
“Where better to celebrate the spirit of ’76 than in Seventy Six, Kentucky, the only Seventy Six in America?” says David Cross, a Clinton County attorney and historian who helped organize the celebration.
Missouri once had a hamlet named Seventy Six, he says, but it vanished many decades ago and now lies beneath a forest of hardwoods. So Seventy Six, Kentucky, population maybe 500, will mark America’s semiquincentennial on the Fourth of July with the biggest fireworks show ever seen in Clinton County.
Other plans for July 3 and 4 include concerts and events honoring Clinton County’s two Medal of Honor recipients, Union soldier Oliver Hughes of Seventy-Six, and Lt. Garlin Murl Conner, a World War II hero with close ties to Seventy Six. There will be special observances by churches, a golf tournament and a program featuring prehistoric artifacts found near Indian Creek—which flows through Seventy Six and over a cliff into nearby Lake Cumberland as 76 Falls.
Since 1952, when Wolf Creek Dam on the Cumberland River impounded Lake Cumberland, the falls has been among the most familiar landmarks and one of the favorite party coves for boaters along the lake’s approximately 1,255 miles of shoreline. . . .
Long ago, historian Ella Nunn, a native of Seventy Six, wrote that when her brother was 6 years old, he and a young cousin were chasing geese in Indian Creek above Seventy Six Falls when the cousin slipped and nearly went over the falls. She said he was saved when her brother grabbed him by the hair as his feet went over the edge.
As children, she wrote, she and her two brothers slipped away from home and “got brave enough to lie on our stomachs right beside where the water poured over the falls and look over.” They waited until they were grown to tell their parents.
Poet, author and historian Rudy Thomas will share many more episodes of local history and folk life during the celebration’s events, including stories of river life before Lake Cumberland, as well as a remembrance of the deadly April 3, 1974, twin tornadoes that took several lives and left permanent scars in Seventy Six and neighboring communities.
Yet, this July Fourth, the little community whose spirit so perfectly matches its name is still here to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.
“We started a foundation a few years ago that’s helped financially,” says Cross, a consumer-member of South Kentucky RECC. “I told somebody, ‘We’re gonna ask for money this year, but we won’t be back for another 50 years.’”
