Licking River (Kentucky)

Licking River
The mouth of the Licking River, where it joins the Ohio River
Basin features
Main source	Magoffin County, Kentucky
River mouth	Ohio River
Basin size	3,593 sq mi (9,310 km2)
Physical characteristics
Length	303 miles (488 km)
Discharge	Average rate: 4,221 cu ft/s (119.5 m3/s)

The Licking River is a partly navigable, 303-mile-long (488 km) tributary of the Ohio River in northeastern Kentucky in the United States. The river and its tributaries drain much of the region of northeastern Kentucky between the watersheds of the Kentucky River to the west and the Big Sandy River to the east.

The Native Americans of the area called the river Nepernine. When the explorer Dr. Thomas Walker first saw it in 1750, he called it Frederick's River. An earlier name given by hunters and frontiersmen, Great Salt Lick Creek, makes reference to the many saline springs near the river that attracted animals to its salt licks. The origin of the present name is unclear, though likely related to the previous name.

Numerous aboriginal peoples inhabited the watershed for at least part of the year for several thousand years; Native American tribes that frequently hunted in and around the Licking River valley included the Shawnee and Cherokee. Other, older settlements of unnamed groups in Bath County on Slate Creek are also known. The river served as an important transportation and trade route for both Native Americans and, from the mid-18th Century on, colonists of European descent who began pushing into the area (predominately from Virginia, Maryland and the Carolina colonies).

In 1782, the river was the site of the Battle of Blue Licks. In 1780, during the Revolutionary War, a group of American frontiersmen under George Rogers Clark gathered at the river's mouth for their march up the valley of the Little Miami River, where they conducted operations against British outposts and British-supported Native American tribes, including elements of the Shawnee, Miami, Mingo and Delaware. The Newport Barracks in Newport guarded its mouth from 1803 to 1894.