A Journalist’s Review of “Surrounding Fort Knox including Southern Indiana”

Mention the words “Fort Knox” to most Americans and the reaction likely will be an army base, a fortress where the U.S. of A. keeps its gold reserves or the place the villain Goldfinger tried to rob in the James Bond 1964 movie “Goldfinger.”

Kentucky author Ronald R. Van Stockum Jr. uses Fort Knox as the focal point in his new, expansive book about the history of an area that contains part of Kentucky and Southern Indiana. “Surrounding Fort Knox Including Southern Indiana” is the latest in his “Surrounding” series about area locales.

Exhaustively researched, the book’s boundaries to cover are set by an author who not only spent many hours researching the locations but actually visiting them. The area reaches Marengo, Ind., in the north, Bardstown and Mount Washington in the east, Upton in the south, and Troy in the west.

Of his travels, Van Stockum proclaims, “I love making loops of history by tracing road through topography rarely ridden.”

His love becomes infectious to the reader as he drives over rugged ridges and through crossroad communities and canoes down wild streams. He even plunges into caves to know more about the area and explains its geology.

Through his travels, he brings out history of the areas and its famous citizens.

He is at his best when he waxes poetically about an area. Of the mouth of the Salt River on the Ohio River at West Point, Ky., he says, “These are the places that painters paint.”

A lengthy portion of the book – 56 pages – is devoted to the Civil War in Kentucky.  It could have made its own book.

Van Stockum mostly adheres to a lengthy and necessary outline for such a big book but meanders from it on occasion. A part of the book about the Shelby County Community Theatre is interesting but I am not sure why it is included. Poet’s license, perhaps?

It is a good-looking book with a fine cover. It also contains great supporting photographs, portrait sketches and illustrations. The footnotes and selected resources provide more information for the readers who want to know more.

The book will be especially interesting for those who grew up in the area, those who now call it home or perhaps for some other reason have heard of Speleofest or Big Bat Cave or Hemlock Cliffs or the fascinating places in between them.

– Jack Brammer, Kentucky Journalist

Jack Brammer, a native of Maysville, has been a news reporter in Kentucky since 1976. He worked two years for The Sentinel-News in Shelbyville and then from 1978 to 2021 in the Lexington Herald-Leader’s Frankfort bureau. After retiring in December 2021 from the Herald-Leader, he became a freelance writer for various publications. Brammer has a Master’s degree in communications from the University of Kentucky and is a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame.