Photo credit: https://nkytribune.com/2015/10/our-rich-history-licking-river-helps-define-us-has-historic-meaning-on-northern-journey-to-ohio
Source:
1. Location: Magoffin County, KY.
Mouth:
1. Location: Ohio River.
2. Length: 303 miles (488 km).
Basin Size: 3,709 sq mi (9,610 km2).
Discharge:
1. Location: Alexandria, KY.
2. Average: 5,694 cu/ft. per second.
The Native Americans of the area called the river Nepernine. When the explorer Thomas Walker first saw it in 1750, he called it Fredricks River. An earlier name given by hunters and frontiersmen, Great Salt Lick Creek, makes reference to the many saline springs near the river that attracted animals to its salt licks. The origin of the present name is unclear, though likely related to the previous name.
Over several thousand years, Native American tribes inhabited the watershed and frequently hunted in and around the Licking River Valley, including the Shawnee and Cherokee. Other, older settlements of unnamed groups in Bath County on Slate Creek are also known. The river served as an important transportation and trade route for both Native Americans and, from the mid-18th Century on, colonists of European descent who began pushing into the area (predominately from Virginia, Maryland and the Carolina colonies).
In 1780, during the Revolutionary War, a group of American frontiersmen under George Rogers Clark gathered at the river’s mouth for their march up the valley of the Little Miami River, where they conducted operations against British outposts and British-supported Native American tribes, including elements of the Shawnee, Miami, Mingo, and Delaware. In 1782, the river was the site of the Battle of Blue Licks. The Newport Barracks in Newport guarded its mouth from 1803 to 1804.
The Licking River is now used extensively for recreation, including shallow-draft boating, canoeing and fishing. It is used for rowing practice by the Cincinnati Junior Rowing Club.
The Licking River rises in the Cumberland Plateau of eastern Kentucky, in southeastern Magoffin County at the confluence of two smaller streams and an elevation of 1,006 feet. Flowing in a northwesterly direction highly meandering past the cities of Salyersville and West Liberty. In Rowan County in the Daniel Boone National Forest it is impounded to form the large Cave Run Lake reservoir. It joins the Ohio River opposite Cincinnati, where it separates the cities of Covington and Newport. The river was used as the southwestern border of the original Mason County and is the southwest border of Fleming and Rowan counties today.
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