Editing Crittenden County, Kentucky (section)

==History==
Crittenden County, located on the Ohio and Tradewater Rivers in the [[Pennyroyal Plateau|Pennyroyal]] region of Kentucky, was created by the state legislature on April 1, 1842, from a portion of [[Livingston County, Kentucky|Livingston County]]. It became the state's 91st county, and was named for [[John J. Crittenden]], a U.S. senator, attorney general, and governor of Kentucky. The first county seat was in Crooked Creek, but it was moved to Marion just two years later.

Crittenden County was once crossed by the Chickasaw Road, which was a part of the Old Saline Trace. This footpath was used by [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]] when hunting game that crossed the [[Ohio River]] to the [[salt licks]] in Illinois. The first settler in the area was James Armstrong, who arrived from [[South Carolina]] in 1786 and built a log cabin. His family joined him five years later, along with other families who came to settle there. Early in the nineteenth century, Flynn's Ferry was established where the trail crossed the river.

Generally pro-[[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] during the [[American Civil War]], the county saw little fighting, although both armies passed through it repeatedly. However, several skirmishes did place there, and the county courthouse was burned by [[Confederate States Army|Confederate]] [[Brigadier General]] [[Hylan B. Lyon]] during his raid across western Kentucky in December 1864. Lyon's men, all Kentuckians, burned a total of seven courthouses, since the [[Union Army]] was using them for barracks. The Confederates allowed the locals to remove the records before setting fire to the courthouses.<ref name="ReferenceA">Kleber, John E., ed. 1992, The Kentucky Encyclopedia. The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington.</ref>

Crittenden County has valuable deposits of [[fluorspar]], zinc, porcelain, coal, limestone, and sand for making glass. Marion was primarily an industrial town in the 1840s associated with the large fluorspar mining industry. This industry peaked in 1947 and has been in slow decline since. Iron production was also a prominent industry in the mid-19th century, with several furnaces being built in the county, one owned by [[Andrew Jackson]]. Other products produced in the county include lumber, glass, modular homes, and blue crystal that was made famous by Ball canning jars. Today the county has a strong agricultural economy. In 1992, 66 percent of the population lived on farms, with 45 percent of the population reporting farming as their primary occupation.<ref name="ReferenceA"/><ref>Hill, William 2014 "Phase I Archaeological Survey for the Planned Perry and Lisa Jones Wetland Reserve Enhancement Project, Crittenden County, Kentucky" Corn Island Archaeology, LLC. Louisville KY.</ref>