Tucked away in the basement of the Cold Spring city building, in a room that until recently served as the community gathering room is the new home of the Cold Spring History Archive.
Council member and Cold Spring native Lisa Cavanaugh has been collecting photos, stories and other memorabilia from the city’s history in the hopes of creating an accessible public archive showcasing the city’s past.
She has been gathering materials for the project for several years and created the “Cold Spring KY History” page on Facebook to draw interest and find others who might have photos and stories to share. The material has been coming in, she said, but she was looking for a permanent home and place to display what she had collected.
A home for local history
When the city opened its new recreation and community center, it freed up space in the city building that had been used for community gatherings and meetings. Cavanaugh said she was thrilled when city officials said she could use the space for the history archive.
“I’m really excited about it,” she said. “I’ve been the city historian for about 10 years. I have a lot of family here in Coldspring. I started to work on this for the 75th anniversary in 2016, but then things got put on the backburner. Now that we have a permanent place for it, I’m trying to put it altogether.”
Cavanaugh has created an initial series of display boards, each telling a story about a particular place or incident in the city’s history. She was fortunate from the start because her mother had an eye for news and took photos of groundbreakings, construction projects — even a plane crash in the 1950s.
She also started with her own family photos.
Pointing out one board displaying photos of the Bertsch family home, she said, “This is actually my grandma’s family here that ran the post office. It was the post office, the general store and the cobbler shop. And then they all lived in the back of the building.”
The Bertsch home place was a social and business hub in those early years, Cavanaugh said. Her great grandma ran the general store. She includes a description of the business set up and how the store looked in the 1920s.
“You walked in the front door, and there was a candy counter and big barrels of flour, canned goods and other items,” Cavanaugh said. “And there was a big block of cheese. When someone wanted some, they’d just cut off a big chunk with a knife and weighed it up on a scale.”
The cold spring
Cold Spring was not officially incorporated as a city until 1941, but it was a community long before then, said Cavanaugh. In fact, the story goes that Daniel Boone had acquired 500 acres in the area in return for his service in the Revolutionary War. The name comes from a natural cold water spring that was discovered in about 1785 when Boone sold the property, according to a history of the area written by John E. Leming.
Leming also described the first settlers as a group of men and women who accompanied Major David Leitch in his travels between Fort Pitt and Losantiville (Cincinnati) in 1789. Eventually Leitch bought acreage in the area and sold it to a handful of families who settled on land in present-day Cold Spring.
Today you can find remnants of the spring behind what is now the Ameristop and the Springhouse condos, said Cavanaugh. One of her displays includes an article and photos about the creek. She also includes a first-hand account by a local resident praising its beauty and an abundance of watercress around the creek. She noted the remnants of a milk house where local farmers brought their milk to keep and be cooled by the spring water.
Building the archive
Cavanaugh includes photos, newspaper clips and descriptions of local churches, farms, St. Joseph Orphanage, the Campbell County Infirmary, as well as several businesses in the area.
She said she has several bundles of photos and other material still to sort through, but she’s hoping for more. The Facebook page provides a way to share and discuss the history of the city, and people can contact her about the archive through that page. Plans are underway to open up the archive room during city events so the community can visit, learn more about the city’s history and contribute to the archive.
“I believe there are probably a lot of buried treasures in people’s basements or attics, or in the homes of their parents or grandparents that they just might not even know about. I encourage people, if you’ve got old photos, we would like to get them copied and add them to the archive.”
Scenes from Cold Spring’s past. Top to bottom (l to r): The old post office, groundbreaking for the Disabled American Vets, Schweitzer’s farm, Cold Spring creek display, Sacksteders garage, St. Joseph’s Orphanage, Martin’s pharmacy and palm reader Sister Roberts. Photos provided by the City of Cold Spring.