Shippingport, Kentucky

Shippingport, Kentucky is an industrial site and one of the six formerly independent settlements at the Falls of the Ohio in what is now Louisville, Kentucky. It was located on a peninsula on the south bank of the Ohio River, and incorporated without a name on October 10, 1785. It was later named Campbell Town after Revolutionary War soldier and settler John Campbell. He had been granted the land for his earlier service in the French & Indian War.

In 1803 the settlement was sold to a Philadelphia-based partnership and renamed Shippingport. Two Tarascon brothers became leaders of the French business community at the Falls, building a large warehouse, a 1200-foot rope walk, and a six-story water-powered flour mill at the site by 1819. Numerous French families settled in the area, making it a center of French culture for a time. Some of the French settlers came from Kaskaskia, Illinois, and other areas of French settlement along the Mississippi River after the United States completed the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Others were fleeing the French Revolution and its violence and political chaos, or social unrest in French colonies in the Caribbean. In 1804 former slaves succeeded in gaining independence for Haiti (formerly the French colony of Saint-Domingue) after years of warfare and violence.

Among the early streets was Tarascon, named for the two French brothers who built up early development; and Bengal, perhaps named for a French settler and schoolteacher who came from Bengal via Calcutta and had first settled in Paris, Kentucky. From 1810 to 1820 the population increased 500%, from 98 to over 500, and this seriously challenged Louisville as Kentucky's most important port. Other early features included Elm Tree Garden, where there was horse-racing, and the Napoleon Distillery. The Tarascons' six-story flour mill built in 1817 became a symbol of Shippingport's success.

Though the town frequently flooded, Shippingport reached its peak in the 1820s with a population of 600. In 1825, construction of the Louisville and Portland Canal across the peninsula left the settlement on an island. Using the canal, ships could bypass the Falls and, by extension, Shippingport.

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