Banklick Creek

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Banklick Creek is a shallow, highly meandering waterway that flows eastward through Kenton County, Kentucky over a distance of some eleven miles, beginning near Independence, Kentucky, and emptying into the northward-running Licking River, at Latonia, Kentucky. Except for its frequent, minor, seasonal floods, Banklick Creek is for the majority of its course extremely shallow and slow-moving, ranging from a few inches at summer pool, to some two to three feet during the spring, however the creek does deepen to about twelve feet in its final two miles, and at its mouth is more than one-hundred feet across and in excess of twenty-five feet in depth. Pioneer Park, established by the Kenton County Parks Board in 1976 , is situated along the banks of the creek, near Taylor Mill, Kentucky, and at one point in the 1970s, the creek, as it bordered the park, was unintentionally contaminated by a local manufacturing concern, with a number of toxic substances that found their way into the streambed. This misfortune led to an extensive clean-up effort by both private and public sources, including the EPA. Although today regarded as clean with no deaths that have ever been linked directly to the 1970's pollution, and in fact home to numerous species of flora and fauna, Banklick Creek is seldom fished or used for recreation, save at its most western reaches. Banklick Creek was once slightly deeper and more navigable than is the case today, and human villages sites which date to the archaic period (some 8,000 BC in some cases) are numerous along its length. A log cabin that was built by the region’s earliest white settlers still stands near the mid-point of Banklick Creek, and may be visited. The creek is popular with both fossil and artifact seekers, and in 2001 a flint paleo spear point dated to circa 11,000 BC was discovered in a silty gravel outcropping, near Latonia.