Transcript
WEBVTT
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Hello everyone This is Howard.
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Foxx and welcome back for another episode of the outdoor adventure series podcast where we celebrate individuals and families businesses and organizations that seek out and promote the exploration stewardship conservation Access and enjoyment of the outdoors.
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Jimmy Shaw and Jim B.
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Phelps are our guests today.
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Jim and Jimmy are representing the destination of Hodgenville, Kentucky and the Knob Creek Conservancy.
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Jimmy and Jim, welcome to the podcast.
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How are you guys doing
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good.
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man.
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Thanks for having us.
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So we're glad to be here.
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We've, we've gotten to know each other over the last couple of weeks, Howard, and this is Jim B's first podcast.
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I'm telling him to smile a little bit and have some fun.
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I do this, I do this probably too much and, but we're glad to be here.
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Thanks for the opportunity.
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Thank you.
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Showcase.
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Yeah.
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Talk
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it is, it's a pleasure, and I'm just excited because I love history, that was my favorite subject, and I felt like as I was doing the research for this podcast when you and I chatted a couple weeks ago to lay the groundwork for it, that this was going to be really possible.
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Yeah.
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Great.
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feeding my, my love of history, and, and I have to say, ask you first for our listeners and for the folks that are going to view the video, uh, first off, Way to the camera.
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Which one of you is Jimmy and which one of you is Jim?
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I'm Jimmy.
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I'm Jimmy.
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I'm
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Jim.
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I'm Jim.
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I'm Jimmy Shaw.
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It's Jim B.
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Phelps.
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Yeah.
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All right, I love it, I love it.
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Now if you would I would love if you could share a little bit of information about yourself, So, Jim B, give us a little bit about your background and your connection to the to Hodgenville and the county and the community in your your area of Beautiful, uh, Kentucky.
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yeah.
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So I was born and raised here in Hodgenville.
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my life, I've been here my whole life, except for the four years I attended college in Lexington, Kentucky, uh, came back and was fortunate enough to be a teacher.
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I'm still in the education business, finishing up my 21st year.
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I now work as the curriculum support for, uh, the LaRue County school system.
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and, uh, the whole Knob Creek thing kind of, popped up four or five years ago when, uh, my dad took over as mayor and we, uh, discovered some unused property that the city had owned at MacDougall Lake and, uh, a group of us kind of banded together that were outdoor enthusiasts and created the Knob Creek Conservancy to, uh, promote conservation, education, and recreation.
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Excellent.
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And great background.
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How did you decide to go into education and become a teacher?
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Cause that's a hard profession, but you know, you're making a difference in kids lives.
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Yeah, my mom was actually a teacher.
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So I lived and breathed the teaching world or education world, staying after school with her and and I just like people.
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I like to help people, uh, love sports and I had a real good, uh, experience in school here at LaRue County.
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And when I, I don't know, it was just kind of one of those things was in college and I was like, you know what, I think I want to go into teaching and It all worked out thankfully.
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And here I am.
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Very good.
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Well, I appreciate you sharing that.
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So now I have to ask, how did you meet the guy next to you?
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we go way back.
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I think.
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I think we were, I got some pictures at home where we were in preschool together.
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So Jimmy was the year ahead of me and, and, uh, high school.
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So, we played little league sports together, uh, probably hung out at each other's house.
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here and there.
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Okay, okay.
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Now, Jimmy, I, I recall when we first had that conversation, I mentioned I'm going to need some photos to put up on it for our banners and our show notes, so I want to see that picture of you guys in preschool, okay, for the show notes, so just no pressure.
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All right.
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Excellent.
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So, Jimmy, tell us a little bit about yourself.
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What's your background?
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Yeah, So I, um, won Jimmy Shaw.
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I think one of the things that's unique, Jim B and I both, I'm, I'm junior Jim B's the, are you the third or fourth?
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You're the third.
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So he, he, my son's the third.
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His son is goes by Burke and his he's the fourth.
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And so we have just deep roots here in the community.
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I shared that with you, Howard, and I usually describe myself to people is like, I do this quite often.
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And how do you describe yourself?
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But I, I've got a little personal saying of just faith family.
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Adventure and then doing work worth doing.
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So born and raised the county goes back.
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We've got deep lineage in the county.
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So the LaRue County, I was a LaRue, um, goes back eight or nine generations.
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The county is named after my family.
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Both of our families have been prominent members of the community for a long time.
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And so we just hope we're doing some justice to that.
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But I've lived here my whole life.
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Other than my college days, I went to school at the University of Louisville.
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I'm an engineer.
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I own a business called Zion Solutions Group and own some real estate businesses.
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And, um, my family, I've got four kids.
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they're my world.
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my wife's Holly.
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She's put up with me for 15 plus years.
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And, uh, LaRue County is a small farming community.
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And I think Jim B and I both share in the fact that we really could have probably gone anywhere and, uh, and had careers in, in, in any location.
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And we both, I think share the same same mindset of that.
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We wanted our children raised in this community where we were raised.
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It made us who we are.
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It's the fabric of us.
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And just it's, it's a great community full of great people and a rich history that we're going to get to.
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So that's just a little bit about me, but yeah.
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Excellent.
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No, I appreciate that.
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Let's talk a little bit, if we could, about the history.
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I mean, you, you, LaRue County.
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and you've, you've got Hodgenville, so all this interconnection, how far does this history go back and what are some of the significant, uh, highlights that are important for the visitor if they want to come and either partake in the outdoor adventure, or maybe they want to get immersed in history, or I imagine you also have some great food and, uh, beverage and music around you as well.
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But what's a little bit about that history, Jimmy?
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Yeah, for sure.
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So I think we got to start with what we're probably best known for.
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Hopefully, how I describe it is, um, Abraham Lincoln was born about two miles from where we're sitting today.
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So there's a National Historic, um, Park, I think is what they call it.
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And then there's another place where when they move from from where he was born to another place called Knob Creek, the boyhood home.
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So our Jim B probably knows better than I do when the city was formed, and it was in the 1800s, and I'm gonna get it wrong, so I'm gonna let him know it and say it for exact, because somebody will listen to this and be like, he has no idea, but our biggest, richest history is going back to Lincoln, so that's, um, what we, what we've been known for.
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there's in the general area, Howard, I think you've got to look at.
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We've obviously got good little dive places to eat.
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We'll talk about Leahy's.
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We'll talk about a few of the other places here to eat and still get that.
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That that short order type meal that small communities are famous for.
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We've got a museum that's dedicated to Lincoln.
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we've got a rich, history in terms of we are in the Bible belt.
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So we've got more, I don't even know the number of churches we have in the area, but it's a lot.
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We're nestled really between Bowling Green and Louisville.
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We're dead center of central Kentucky.
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So we're 65.
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Bowling Green's got the Corvette Museum.
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It's got, a Mammoth Cave, a National Park, one of the most visited National Parks, is about an hour, 60 to 90 minutes south.
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Louisville, which is the biggest city, is about 60 minutes north.
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Lexington's about 60 minutes northeast.
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So we're nestled in a good spot.
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Bourbon, a lot of people really know Kentucky for a few things, racing, horse racing, and bourbon.
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And, uh, So we're right in the middle of, within an hour, you could go visit some of the world's most recognizable brands of bourbon and the tourism around it, but specific to Hodgenville, I think Jim B and I are here to just promote, like, we're a small farming community with a rich history.
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It goes back to Lincoln, that's our anchor, and then Jim B has led, he's too modest about this, Howard, but he's led just a real revitalization effort in terms of making this more of an outdoor location, more of an outdoor, what your podcast is about.
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It's a destination now in terms of, we've got hiking, we've got fishing, you can kayak, we've got a trail system that's pretty awesome that we've self built.
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Hey, while you're here, you can grab a cheeseburger at Leigh Hayes, you can go visit the Lincoln Museum, you can ride around a small town in America, and then you can go see where Lincoln was born and where he moved
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it.
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That's a, that's a high level overview of some of the attractions.
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Yeah,
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No, that's that's actually perfect.
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Jim.
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Jim B.
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If you want to add another layer to that, I'm curious if you know this answer if and if you don't, I'm sure it's going to be significant.
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The number of visitors or the economic impact that you all have with folks coming in, whether it's a day trip.
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I mean, like,
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I know it.
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It's about 400, 000 people is what, what some, some stats that we've had, and that number may fluctuate up and down, but there's probably about 400, 000 people that come in and visit, visit the National Park and just spill over through the tourism, through Lincoln Museum and through Mammoth Caves.
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So I've heard that number, maybe wrong.
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I think
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that's in the Lincoln Museum, uh, Iris LaRue and Rob Thurman.
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Iris is the director and she's been a big part of, of kind of.
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know, helping to make Hodgenville a destination.
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And so is Rob Thurman.
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they tracked, they have visitors yearly from, uh, or annually from all 50 states, but I think, uh, in 2024, they counted 35, uh, visitors from 35 foreign countries
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Oh, wow.
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the Lincoln Museum.
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So
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very cool.
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That's
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And then right downtown, Jimmy mentioned Leigh Hayes.
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the Lincoln Museum is right downtown.
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It used to be a square, and it was a pretty typical, uh, square of Kentucky, the small towns in Kentucky that were the, the courthouse was the center of the town.
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It was on the square.
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Our courthouse actually burned down, if I'm not mistaken, twice.
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But, so we, when we were kids, uh, the courthouse was not there.
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It was already gone, but right down in the center of town was the Abraham Lincoln statue.
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that's similar to the statue at the Lincoln Memorial in D.
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C.
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And, uh, they have now turned that into a circle.
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Squircle.
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Call it a squircle now.
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A squircle.
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Yeah.
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So the Lincoln Museum's right downtown and you've got the Sweet Shop, which is kind of a nationally famous, uh, fudge and ice cream place.
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Uh, and then of course, Leigh Hayes.
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We're going to keep talking about Leigh Hayes.
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It's been around forever and it's the world's greatest cheeseburger.
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come for a visit, I want to go, I'm definitely going to go to Leje.
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I'm a cheeseburger guy.
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I love my cheeseburger.
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a good one.
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So right downtown, if a visitor, they're.
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Two and a half, three miles away from the birthplace.
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They usually come into town and, uh, hit the sweet shop, hit lay Hayes and hit the Lincoln museum.
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Vibe coffee.
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Vibe coffee.
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It's there now.
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And we got a couple of little boutique places that you can do some shopping and just, there's been a.
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There's been an effort to, to draw people into downtown.
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Um, we've had a couple, we've got a, we've got a restaurant called the 16th.
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that, that is not, it, it's, it's downtown as well.
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And we've really tried to mix the, the group of, you've got people coming in Howard, and they want something to do.
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And people want to eat, they want to shop, and they want to, they want a destination to come to.
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And so we, we've got a little bit of all of that.
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And so, kind of a quick history note too.
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You know, right downtown, this was before Jimmy and I.
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It had a bowling alley.
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It had two car dealerships.
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we had a motel where the, uh, heard lots of stories about, I think my great grandfather was involved to playing cards a little too late at the motel on the square.
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But, uh, We lost a lot of that in the sixties after the, uh, development of the interstate systems, interstate 65.
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So as Jimmy said, Hodgenville centrally located and you can get about anywhere.
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So it's kind of a hub.
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Uh, 31 was the main road that came through before the interstate system, so it was kind of a boom town.
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And of course then the, the interstate system was built and we lost a lot of that.
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Uh, we lost a lot of those stores traffic.
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A lot of the, a lot of the traffic coming through, so.
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Since probably the nineties, late nineties, maybe early nineties, they've, people even before us have really worked hard to revitalize.
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The downtown feel and I think we're headed in the right direction.
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Absolutely.
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it.
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It sounds fantastic.
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And, in a lot of the interviews that I've had, whether it's off route 66, some of the destinations, like 29 palms, uh, Which is the Joshua Tree National Park here in Las Vegas where I live Boulder City and we do a pod we help them produce their podcast the best damn podcast but when that interstate went up Boulder City was just like cut off and they recognized like you guys have been recognizing the the importance of history and tourism and And finding reasons to come into this destination and I love what you have done and and I'm going back to that map I saw on the Visit Hodgenville site, within three hours, two and a half hours, you can come in, have a great day, or even stay over in some of the boutique bed and breakfast or the Airbnbs and then.
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Go back home.
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So you got a great weekend, long weekend destination.
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I love that.
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When did the, the idea of this conservancy around this land that the city had and MacDougall Lake, because that, that takes a lot of foresight there.
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Is this because.
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People want to get outside.
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They want to be in nature.
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And, I'm very interested in the idea of mental health in nature.
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And so the idea that I can go out of my downtown area and go walk in a park on a trail, that's exciting.
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And how did, uh, how did the, the conservancy begin to come about?
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Which one do you want to tee that one up?
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this is all Jim B.
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So, yeah,
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let me get long winded here.
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But, uh, so, like I said, my, my dad became mayor in, uh, 2019, I think was his first year and, uh, he was just digging through some files and saw McDougal Lake.
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So McDougal Lake was popular.
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It was a popular fishing destination here in, uh, Hodgkinville.
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But I don't know that people realize how much land Surrounded Lake is about 400 acres, including the 100 acre lake.
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So you had about 300 acres of land.
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A little bit of that's kind of floodplain unusable.
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So, long story short, we, uh, my dad sent me a screenshot of the map and I was like, man, we could do something with this because, Jimmy's hiking trail running.
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I like to trail run, hike, mountain bike.
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Other members of our board.
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the same that you're outdoor enthusiast, even some of them are, nature lovers observing wildlife and plants trees.
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So, I reached out to 2 fellow Hajim billions, uh, Damon Barnes and Ben Brian, who both had, uh, some significant experience with green space, which is a, uh, Conservation organization in Hardin County, Kentucky, about 2020 minutes north of us.
00:16:22.947 --> 00:16:26.758
So I reached out to them and said, Hey, guys, we got an opportunity here.
00:16:26.758 --> 00:16:27.408
What do you think?
00:16:27.408 --> 00:16:42.227
And so those two guys, Damon and Ben and myself met with my dad on, uh, we were January of 2020 and we kind of started the ball like, Hey, can we develop this?
00:16:42.587 --> 00:16:49.087
And so, uh, actually, I think that was January of 2019.
00:16:49.582 --> 00:16:52.923
Cause we, we broke ground on the trail in January of 2020.
00:16:52.932 --> 00:16:54.003
So I just got that wrong.
00:16:54.192 --> 00:17:03.533
We met my dad in January of 19 and a year later, we started breaking ground on building the trail, uh, at McDougal and in the meantime.
