It’s such a small city that I would have a hard time ever living there again, but life can be pretty sweet there.

Frankfort is of course the state capital, which some of you might remember from some ridiculous civics or geography quiz in grade school.

On my trip over Thanksgiving, my folks, sister, and I went to Fort Hill, which looms above the oldest parts of the city. From the website:

In 1864 local militia soldiers repulsed an attack on Frankfort by the Confederate cavalry raiders. Fort Hill is a historic site and wilderness area on a high hill overlooking downtown Frankfort. During the 19th century, the hill was known as Blanton’s Hill for the family that owned the hilltop. After the Civil War, the Army quickly abandoned Fort Hill. By the middle of the 20th century efforts began to develop the site as a historic park. Many development plans were proposed but rejected, and the park did not open until 1999. Now the Leslie W. Morris Park on Fort Hill, named for the property owner from whom the city of Frankfort acquired the land, offers a historic area around the forts and many acres of wilderness forest and meadows right in the middle of Frankfort, Kentucky’s capital city. The park preserves the remains of two Civil War earthwork forts.

Here are a few photos of the remains of one of the earthen forts, the stone foundation of the magazine, some pretty outrageous osage apples, and a “dog trot” style house built elsewhere in the county around 1810 and moved to the park as a visitors center in 2000.

And we spent about an hour wandering through the two stories of the entertaining, rich, and quirky Capital City Museum. In the heart of downtown, it’s more of a cultural history of Frankfort than anything else. The exhibits aren’t arranged chronologically, and there are some pretty obvious omissions. But I left with a much deeper appreciation for the life of the city.

I posted a couple of images to Instagram while we were perusing the exhibits:

Sure, the museum has a lot of info about more official Frankfort history, but I especially appreciated cultural artifacts like those.

There’s also a fascinating exhibit about one of Frankfort’s earliest cemeteries, which was lost to memory at some point after the last burials in the mid-19th century. It was rediscovered when the state was putting up a new office building. Some of the graves were apparently moved to the beautiful cemetery on the hill, but at least 250 bodies remained. Some were poor, some not. Some black, some white. Some had more elaborate burials. It’s a fascinating exhibit.

The bodies were reinterred on Fort Hill, in a relatively poorly marked spot just off the main access road on the way to the visitors center:

And here I’ll repost a set of photos that I took over Thanksgiving 2012 in downtown Frankfort, and another from Thanksgiving 2011. I thought about shooting photos on this trip, but I would likely have ended up with the same images:

Last year I posted a similar tour, but, while there are a few duplicate shots, that gallery was mostly on the south side of the Kentucky River in the neighborhood closer to the “new” capitol.

Click here for that post.

On this walk I headed across the “singing bridge” and into the heart of North Frankfort.

Downtown Frankfort has some amazing architectural assets, some upbeat cultural trends, great examples of pre-automobile urban-but-not-crowded neighborhoods, and many questions about its future. Given the sheer beauty of the buildings, I can’t help but feel optimistic about the prospects, despite the number of vacancies you can see here.

I often edit photos a bit for contrast, saturation, and other basic qualities — but only a handful of things have been done here. That’s how gorgeous the day was. My old D40 wasn’t so good at shooting houses with the sun directly behind them, so I had to leave a few out. Still, lots of pics, some with comments if you hover over them.

I was certainly not surprised to see that Obama won just four counties in my home state of Kentucky. Two of them were predictable:
*Fayette: home to Lexington and the University of Kentucky, plus a sizable black population
*Jefferson: home to Louisville and the University of Kentucky, plus a sizable black population

But how about the other two:

Elliott County in Eastern Kentucky, which has less than 8,000 people and is over 99 percent white. Elliott has apparently voted for the Democrat in every presidential race since the county was founded in 1869. That’s the longest winning streak for any party in any county in the country. But it was close this year, with Obama beating Romney 1,186 to 1,126.

And Franklin County went for Obama. That’s where I grew up — the county seat is Frankfort, which is also the state capital. Here’s what the vote looked like in Franklin County in 2012 and 2008:

What a curious switch. Largely because of government employment, the economy in Frankfort seems to have held up pretty well — but certainly not extremely well. The county has less than 50,000 people, with a black population of less than 5,000. The city has a little bit of a funkier edge than it used to have — or so it seems to me on my visits every few months — but it’s hard to account for the shift in a year when Obama typically underperformed his results from four years ago.

I’ve lived in Savannah since 1995. Before that, I was in Philadelphia for about six years. I was in northern Massachusetts for about a year and a half. I lived in St. Louis for about five years.

But when I was in school and teaching in those various places, I would always spend a few weeks a year in Frankfort, Kentucky, where I grew up.

I have experienced three incredibly different Frankforts. My family lived downtown on Logan Street when I was a toddler, but I don’t remember that at all.

My memories begin on the west side of town, when we lived in the Meadows, a then-new suburban neighborhood. We had a big yard, a big basement, several great trees — all on a quiet dead end street that had enough slope to be perfect for biking and other activities. Like so many suburban areas that are now a few decades old, Knollwood Street and those around it aren’t as impressive as they used to be. The housing boom fueled growth in other areas, with bigger — if not necessarily better built — homes with master suites and more bathrooms.

When I was entering 8th grade, we moved to rural Franklin County. My parents had bought about 13 acres of hilly, wooded, brambly land along the Kentucky River off the very steep River Valley Road. We built a modern log home, which is where I lived through high school and was where I visited for years.

Earlier this century, my parents moved into downtown Frankfort. They didn’t want to maintain so much land, and they certainly didn’t want to get snowed in for a few days every winter.

So now I’m getting reacquainted with downtown, one of the most historical and beautiful small cities that you’ll find anywhere.

For many months, my practical-minded parents were unable to find a house they wanted to buy because they wanted a ground floor bedroom. No steps. But the older homes downtown simply weren’t designed like that. And then they found one on Shelby Street — one with an elevator installed in the 1950s. It’s a lovely elevator too: one of those brass cage ones that floats down the wall right inside the entrance and disappears into the trunk room upstairs when not in use.

Given its beauty, its history, and its architecture, one would hope that Frankfort’s downtown would be a resilient one no matter what. And it is resilient, and will remain so, but those reasons themselves probably aren’t enough. As the capital of Kentucky — one of the smallest state capitals in the country — Frankfort will always benefit from state jobs and investment. Given that simple fact, I’m surprised that there haven’t been sharper, more coordinated efforts to bring residents and commerce back to downtown, but maybe I’m hoping for too much. In recent years, the Grand Theatre has reopened, a city museum has opened, new restaurants and bars have opened, private investors have taken some big preservation risks — and all that’s in the face of a terrible economy.

So here’s a walk through Frankfort. All of these photos were taken over Thanksgiving weekend 2011. All were taken with my small Nikon, not my DSLR. All were taken within about half a mile of parents’ house — just a short walk this way or that. I have added captions and comments.

There are several different ways you can look at these. Obviously, they’re posted below, and if you hover your mouse over them, the text will appear.

Or you can click the “View with CoolIris” link.

Or you can click on one of the photos (they’re actually just big thumbnails) and enter a slideshow. I’ve got big sizes here, so that probably won’t work on a laptop, but it’s probably the best way if you have a desktop.

Enjoy.