Carol Brenner Tobe

Worthington and Springdale Carol Brenner Tobe

The Jefferson County communities of Worthington and Springdale are located on Brownsboro Road, 12 miles east of Louisville. The area's abundant water sources and fertile soil attracted the earliest settlers in the late 1700s, and farms, mills, and blacksmith shops sprang up along the streams. The Brownsboro Road (originally called Brownsboro Turnpike) served farmers selling their produce, as well as the wealthy "gentleman farmers" who built fine homes in the rural countryside. The fertile soil was particularly suited to growing potatoes, and the Worthington Potato Growers Cooperative handled thousands of barrels daily. The community came together to construct churches and a fine stone school building, establish a cemetery, and organize a fire department. The historic African American community of Taylortown survives in the Taylortown African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church, established in 1868. Today, suburban sprawl has erased all but a few vestiges of the once-thriving farming communities.