The “pigeon roost” was once a local landmark on Lulbegrud Creek. The place was notorious in the late 18th century for the gathering of huge flocks of passenger pigeons. The roost stood in a grove of trees on the west bank of Lulbegrud at the farthest eastern point of the creek in the easternmost corner of Clark County (about a half-mile downstream from Oil Springs).
Kentucky biologists Mary Wharton and Roger Barbour asserted that “no other bird in primeval America was as numerous as the passenger pigeon.” Contemporary reports speak of the sky darkening when large flocks flew overhead. John James Audubon described a migration he observed in 1813:
“I seated myself on an eminence, and began [counting] every flock that passed. In a short time finding the task which I had undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in in countless multitudes, I...traveled on and still met more the farther I proceeded. The air was literally filled with Pigeons. The light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse. The dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow, and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose. I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions.”
Pigeons were so abundant they were held in contempt. The bill of fare at Duncan Tavern in Paris listed many types of meat, the cheapest of which was pigeon. The birds were slaughtered on a prodigious scale. Farmers drove their hogs to roosting sites to feed on dead birds. The species went into severe decline after the Civil War, was rarely seen after 1890, and has been considered extinct since 1914.
The last documented sighting in the state occurred in Clark County. It was reported by Lucien Beckner in The Last Wild Pigeon in Kentucky, published by the Kentucky Academy of Sciences. According to Beckner’s account, his brother Seth shot a passenger pigeon on November 20, 1898, about three miles southwest of Winchester. “To the subsequent regret of everyone concerned, the specimen was eaten instead of preserved.”
The “pigeon roost” is shown on an elaborately drawn map in the record of a land controversy, Cuthbert Combs v. Thomas Porter’s heirs, in 1813. Several witnesses pointed out the location of the pigeon roost to surveyor William Sudduth. This map is of immense historical value for Clark County since Sudduth also plotted numerous Indian Old Fields landmarks. These included earthen works, “the gate posts” and remnants of old buildings in the “Indian Town,” as well as Marquis Calmes’ improvement, William Beasley’s cabin, the blockhouse, several salt licks and springs, and a waterfall on a branch of Upper Howard’s Creek. The record also includes invaluable statements by William Calk, Enoch Smith, Cuthbert Combs, and other pioneers who described the area as it appeared in the year 1775.
This land case appears in one of thirteen large, leather-bound volumes called the Clark County Complete Record Books. These valuable accounts of land trials have been relatively untouched by historians. The books and numerous other court records — housed in Winchester in the courthouse and the circuit court building for nearly two centuries — were hauled to Frankfort in 2006 for “safekeeping,” by order of Kentucky’s Administrative Office of the Courts. They are now available for public viewing at the Department for Libraries and Archives, 300 Coffee Tree Road.
