April 3, 2025
Meyer and Hinkle store construction, 1950
Spectators watched the excavation at Main and Walnut streets for the new Meyer and Hinkle store building in April 1950. The women’s speciality store was moving from the Phoenix hotel annex, which was to be razed as part of the hotel’s building plans, for approximately 25 years. The business was organized as a corporation in 1921 by Edward M. Meyer and Ed Hinkle. Hinkle’s interests were purchased in 1933 by Meyer and the store became a family partnership. Construction of the $100,000 building at Main and Walnut was to be completed by September 1. The one-story structure was to be 45 feet wide and 120 feet long with an exterior of limestone, granite and brick. The entrance was to be on Main Street. Herald-Leader Archive Photo
Mail Pouch tobacco barn, 1994
Sherry Holbrook used a gas-powered string trimmer against a backdrop of an old tobacco barn painted with a Mail Pouch Tobacco advertisement on her family’s farm in Floyd County June 29, 1994. The barn was painted with the Mail Pouch Tobacco signage about 35 years before. The barn sat on Ky 114 between Salyersville and Prestonsburg. Photo by Charles Bertram | Staff
Record flooding in Paintsville, 1984
Steve Evans and Greg Hence paddled past the Superamerica store where Evans is the manager in Paintsville May 8, 1984. Rivers and streams swollen by torrential rains left their banks across much of Kentucky on May 7, leaving at least three people dead and one missing. Large numbers were left homeless in the state’s worst flood in at least six years. Photo by David Cooper
Subtle General Store, 1984
Jerry Gibson bought some snacks from Bessie Janes, known as “Mrs Bessie” in January 1984 in the Subtle General Store in Metcalfe County. The general store, in Subtle, Ky., was on Ky 496 between Edmonton and Marrowbone and had been in the Janes family since it was established by Frances Janes in 1905. Mrs Bessie, 80, was the fifth Janes to operate the store. As reporter Jim Warren put it, “besides being the proprietor, she was also the community’s resident librarian, matriarch, chief conversationalist and newspaper correspondent. Photo by Steve R. Nickerson | Staff
Tennessee men arrested for liquor theft, 1949
County police officers Frank Dillion, left, and Walter Franklin, right, shown with Burton Laughters, second from left, and James Harkelroad, both of Kingsport, Tenn. in June 1949, who were arrested in Lancaster in a truck loaded with more than $5,800 worth of liquor stolen from the United Wholesale Liquor Company warehouse on North Broadway extended. Some 77 cases of liquor was recovered. Herald-Leader Archive Photo
State Police magician Lee Allen Estes, 1951
Lieutenant Lee Allen Estes, safety magician for the Kentucky State Police Department, and Mrs. Estes were photographed in their home on Lafayette Drive in February 1951. The Estes’ decorated their basement walls with over 1,000 photographs of the great and near-great of the magician and theatrical world, all personally autographed. Above the couch is a large photo of Estes with his Super Safety Patrolman, Willie and Kenny Talk. A full-time magician, he performed daily before Kentucky’s school children, teaching them safety rules though the medium of magic. Herald-Leader Archive Photo
Farmer’s Market on Vine St., 1990
J.T. Kriegel of Georgetown bagged new potatoes as customers began arriving at Lexington’s Farmer’s Market downtown on Vine Street on Saturday morning August 25, 1990. The market began in the early 1970’s, with the first location on the present Civic Center site in 1973. They then moved to a vacant lot on West Main Street across from Newtown Pike in 1974. The Broadway and Maxwell site was used in 1979 and in June 1980 they opened on the north side of Vine Street between Vine and Upper Streets, where it remained until moving to their current location in Cheapside Park in 2009, with the addition of the 5/3 Bank Pavilion in 2010. Photo by Ron Garrison | Staff
Heavy rains flood Versailles Road, 1992
Two men attempted to push a stalled car from flooded Versailles Road at Red Mile Road on June 18,1992. That day’s weather began with winds up to 65 mph and 2.23 inches of rain, which gave way to clear skies in the afternoon. But by 6 p.m., Lexington was under a tornado warning and by 10 p.m. more than 2 1/2 inches more of rain had fallen. Local forecast calls for rain and possible thunderstorms through the weekend. Photo by Tom Marks | Staff
Mayor’s Clean Team at work, 1983
Sheryl Dawson, 17, left, Lovetta Barnes, 18 and Diane Lewis, 17, picked up branches after trimming a bush on a vacant lot at North Broadway and New Street in June 1983. They were part of a 40 member Mayor’s Clean Team that cleaned public lots and right-of-ways for two months that summer. The team was part of the Bluegrass Employment and Training Summer Youth Employment Program. Photo by David Perry | Staff
Jacob Tamme celebrated touchdown, 2006
University of Kentucky tight end Jacob Tamme celebrated his first half touchdown as the Wildcats played Central Michigan at Commonwealth Stadium on Sept. 30, 2006. Kentucky won 45-36. Tamme, who went on to play nine seasons in the NFL, was named to the University of Kentucky Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2018 this week. Photo by David Stephenson | Staff
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