Kentucky Author
Gary A. O’Dell
Tales from Old Kentucky
I have been writing about the landscape and history of Kentucky for many years. I am a lifelong caver who has been exploring, mapping and studying caves for more than fifty years. I am also interested in water resources, springs and springhouses, environmental issues, horses and equine history, and the history of gunpowder, among other subjects. My work has been published in such respected journals as the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society (6 times), Filson Club History Quarterly (twice), Ohio Valley History (twice), Historical Archaeology and others. I would like to share some of these stories with you on this website; you can download them for free.
Daniel Boone’s first view of the Bluegrass Region was from a tall hill in Madison County in May, 1769. “We saw with pleasure the beautiful level of Kentucky,” he later recalled. To Boone and those who followed in his footsteps, Kentucky was a Paradise on Earth.
Bluegrass Paradise: Royal Spring and the Birth of Georgetown, Kentucky
2023, University Press of Kentucky.
Reinventing the American Thoroughbred: The Arabian Adventures of Alexander Keene Richards
Forthcoming Spring 2025, Louisiana State University Press.