Tales from the Kentucky Hemp Highway by Dan Isenstein

Among the many hidden gems in Bluegrass history is the states long relationship with hemp a history noted by a historical Hemp Highway designation. Archibald McNeil was the first to plant the crop in the state in 1775. In 1803 John Wesley Hunt opened the first hemp bagging factory in the United States and helped transform Lexington into the Athens of the West. Another grower Thomas Barbee had a child with an enslaved person and freed his children on his deathbed. His grandson became a hemp growe