Leslie Morris Park at Fort Hill

Named for Mr. Leslie Morris, who donated the land to the City of Frankfort, the park preserves 125 acres of forest in the middle of Kentucky's capital city. There are two Civil War earthworks in the park -- Fort Boone and the New Redoubt. A detachment of John Hunt Morgan's raiders attacked Fort Boone on June 10-11, 1864, but a group of local militiamen fought off that raid from behind the walls of the fort. Among the defenders were Thomas Bramlette, then governor of Kentucky, and John Marshall Harlan, who would serve later as a justice on the United States Supreme Court. The New Redoubt was built by Union Army engineers as a replacement for the state-designed Fort Boone. Ironically, the Fort Hill earthworks are Union fortifications built in part by slave labor -- slavery remaining legal and commonplace in Kentucky until the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Men of the 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry did much of the work on Fort Boone. The park's visitor center is an 1810 log building moved to the site in 2000 to prevent its demolition at its original location. Known as the Sullivan House after the family that lived there for generations, much of the house portrays a Civil War era roadside inn.