Looking Back: Remembering Lincoln County's Arabia - Central Kentucky News
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Looking Back: Remembering Lincoln County's Arabia
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Recommend 0 The recent train wreck in the McKinneyGeneva community has brought back memories of former train wrecks and stories 0 • StumbleUpon of the past from up and down the railroad • Submit lines of both the Norfolk-Southern Railroad and the now defunct L&N Railroad through Lincoln County. Only the very oldest living residents today can remember when every small community along the railroads had a depot or train stop Photo contributed station for the convenience of its local residents.Gone are the days when a mother and her children could walk down to the railroad tracks and flag down a train for an afternoon shopping trip in town. Several older folks recall catching the train at the old Givens Station stop on the L&N railroad near Knob Lick Creek and riding into Stanford in the morning and catching the evening train back to Givens Station. Others remember stories, such as one incident that occurred about 1900 when a mob hung a black man accused of some now-forgotten offense. This hanging took place on the side of the old South Fork railroad trestle. At that time, the trestle was a wooden structure that was later replaced with the present trestle, which is of steel and iron construction.One of the nearly-forgotten railroad communities on the old Southern railroad was located in Lincoln County, one-half mile north of the South Fork trestle. This community was called Arabia. The Arabia post office and store stood on the north side of the tracks, just a short distance from the present-day home of Danny and Sandy Coffman.It is not certain when the Arabia post office opened but it was in operation for several years before the South Fork post office opened where Coffman’s Garage now stands. The late Coy Reynolds of the South Fork community recalled when, as a young man, he served as the Arabia postmaster. One of his fondest memories was of when he stood beside the tracks once or twice a week as the mail train passed by. Standing there with a special hook in his hand, he would reach up and snatch the mailbag from the side of the train as it passed by. The mailbag was hung on the side of the train from a metal hanger with a special release mechanism that allowed the bag to be snatched away by hand using the hook. This arrangement allowed for the delivery of the mail without actually having to stop the train at every small post office along the railroad line.The Arabia store continued in operation by a Burton family for several years and the building stood until just two years ago. Long abandoned and in ruins, the building was demolished for safety reasons.With the passing of the years, Arabia as a place name is now known to only a few local families. Sadly, no one seems to remember how Arabia got its name. Hopefully, there is someone somewhere who knows how Arabia came to be in Lincoln County.
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