Visitors Guide to Wickliffe
Ballard County, Kentucky

Wickliffe is the seat of Ballard County and is located on the Mississippi River in the southwest of the county. Humans have inhabited the Wickliffe area from as early as 1100 A.D. when Wickliffe was hone to a Mississippian culture village now known only as Wickliffe mounds. The Mississippians built a complex settlement with permanent houses and earthen mounds situated around a central plaza. They farmed the river bottoms and participated in a vast trade network. They also buried their dead here with dignity and respect. After the 1300s the Mississippians abandoned the village. The Mississippians built a complex settlement with permanent houses and earthen mounds situated around a central plaza. They farmed the river bottoms and participated in a vast trade network. They also buried their dead here with dignity and respect. After the 1300’s the Mississippians at Wickliffe Mounds abandoned the village. In 1932, amateur archaeologist Colonel Fain W. King purchased the site and began excavating the mounds. Later joined by his wife, Blanche Busey King, they continued their excavations and operated the site as a tourist attraction known as the Ancient Buried City. After several different owners the site was transferred to the Commonwealth of Kentucky and designated as the Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site. Today, the Wickliffe Mounds museum exhibits the excavated features of the mounds, outstanding displays of Mississippian pottery, stone tools, bone and shell implements, the architecture of Mississippian mounds and houses, burial practices of the Mississippians and a bird's eye view of the bluff atop the ceremonial mound.

In 1780 during the Revolutionary War, General George Rogers Clark established Fort Jefferson on a hill overlooking the Mississippi River one mile south of present-day Wickliffe. The fort was intended to protect what was then the western boundary of the United States from raids by the British Army and Native Americans. It was abandoned in 1781 after a siege by the Chickasaw tribe. The location became the site of a second Fort Jefferson which Lewis and Clark visited in November of 1803 to recruit members for the Discovery Expedition. The site later served as a Union Army post during the American Civil War. General Ulysses S. Grant directed a demonstration against the Confederate-held position at Columbus, Kentucky from Fort Jefferson in January of 1862. Troops from the post also joined in capturing Fort Henry in February 1862 and the post served as a Union supply depot for operations in the western theater of the war. A 90-foot-tall cross, the Fort Jefferson Memorial Cross at the Confluence which was completed in 2000, now occupies the site on Fort Jefferson hill.

The modern day community traces it history to its founding in 1880. The town was named for Colonel Charles A. Wickliffe, legislator, Confederate officer, and nephew and namesake of Kentucky's fifteenth governor. Wickliffe replaced Blandville, the previous county seat, in 1882. The Wickliffe post office opened in 1879 after moving from its previous location at nearby Fort Jefferson.