Paradise, Kentucky: The River Landing That Became a Power Plant

01From Stom's Landing to Paradise: Origins on the Green River

The accounts of how Paradise began do not fully agree. Otto Rothert's 1913 A History of Muhlenberg County calls it "one of the oldest places in the county." He says it was built on land first settled by Leonard Stum, also spelled Stom, who ran the first store there with his sons Jacob and Henry. For years the place was known as Stum's Landing. According to Rothert, the name probably changed to Paradise before the Stums died "along in the '40s."

A local-history article on the Kygenweb Muhlenberg site tells it differently. It says the Jacob Stom family came up the Green River in the late 1790s on Revolutionary War land grants and set up a ferry. The landing was Stom's Landing for more than 40 years. Wikipedia credits Leonard Stom with founding the ferry. No exact founding year turns up in the sources, only the early 19th century in general terms.

Nobody seems sure why the town became Paradise. Wikipedia and the Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer both say it may once have been called Monterey, and both call the origin of "Paradise" unknown. A family-history site offers a folk legend about a sick child recovering. It is a legend and nothing more.

02Coal, Iron and Scots: How Paradise Made Its Living

The post office opened on March 1, 1852, and the date holds up across sources, though they appear to share a common origin. By then Paradise was a river town in a county being reshaped by minerals.

Rothert places Airdrie Hill about a mile below Paradise, where R.S.C.A. Alexander built the Airdrie iron furnace in 1855. According to Kygenweb, miners and ironworkers from Ayrshire, Scotland, arrived at the Paradise landing in the 1850s to work the iron ore downriver. The same account says coal was barged out from a mine near Paradise during that decade. Other sources push mining earlier. One cites a 1992 Kentucky New Era report that mining in the area dates to the 1820s. That claim is single-sourced and unverified.

The landing, ferry and stores were the town's daily business. Oral-history participants recall stores such as Cavenaugh's, the arrival of electricity, and the move from a one-room school to a graded school. A photograph on a family-history site is captioned as showing the school in 1906. The Green River ferry kept running until 1967. Wikipedia notes that the surrounding country was heavily strip mined through the 20th century.

No reliable source gives a peak population. One account describes the town as "a few hundred" people, and a figure of about 800 circulates online without a source. Neither can be confirmed.

03What Happened to Paradise?

TVA began building its coal-fired Paradise plant in 1959. The first two units came online in 1963, and a third followed in 1970. Residents began leaving as soot from the smokestacks settled over the town. Beech Tree News describes ash from the plant showering the community before TVA bought out the last residents. Wikipedia also cites health concerns and plans to expand the plant.

According to the Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer, TVA owned all the land in the old town by 1967, and the last residents had left. Oxford American reports that TVA bought out the last municipal buildings that year and bulldozed them. One oral-history participant, Sandra Bruce, remembers leaving before "the TVA buy-out in 1964," so the exact date of the buyout is still contested.

The town's best-known epitaph comes from John Prine, whose father was from Paradise. His 1971 song "Paradise" blames Peabody coal for the loss. Oxford American and Pophistorydig both point out that it was TVA, not Peabody, that took the town.

04Can You Visit Paradise Today?

Not in any way that would satisfy a ghost-town traveler. The site is occupied by TVA's Paradise Fossil Plant, now the Paradise Combined Cycle Plant, and Oxford American reports that the public is not allowed near it. The Wikipedia coordinates, 37°16′05″N 86°59′01″W, mark where the town stood. A traveler to the abandoned Paradise site will find an industrial installation, not a street of empty buildings.

05What Remains of Paradise Today

The Paradise ghost town in Muhlenberg County survives mostly in memory and in its graveyards. Oxford American's 2017 account says the only visible evidence of the town's former residents is its three cemeteries, which remain intact and relatively well maintained. A genealogy forum post names two of them on the plant property: McDougall (Old Paradise) Cemetery and a Hamm cemetery.

The plant that displaced the town has itself changed. According to the Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer, the coal units were retired in 2017 and 2020 and replaced by a gas plant. The oral-history project's recordings are among the fullest surviving records of what the town was like to live in.