The Nearly Forgotten History of Portland, Kentucky is the true story of the creation of the independent town below the falls of the Ohio that is now a resurgent neighborhood on the northwest end of Louisville.  This story begins with the geologic formation of the 350-million-year-old Devonian-Era fossil beds now known as the Falls, glimpses of its mysterious prehistory, and then we meet the Shawnee, who are there when Daniel Boone arrives. From there, Portland becomes the stepping-off point for Lewis & Clark and many adventurers after them. Because of its early prominence, the story of early Portland is a parade of famous names, from Henry Clay, John James Audubon, a young Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain.  But it is Portland’s residents — Jim Porter, the Batman brothers, Pink Varble, Gen. William “Bull” Nelson, and Mary Millicent Miller, America’s first female steamboat pilot — who make this story what it is: a page-turning narrative that reveals the history of Kentucky and Louisville from a new point-of-view: from the Lower Wharf of the Falls of the Ohio at Portland.  James Higdon is a native of Lebanon, Kentucky, where he was educated by the Sisters of Loretto. He holds degrees from Centre College, Brown University, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author of The Cornbread Mafia and works as a freelance journalist with bylines in POLITICO Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, Esquire Magazine, and The Washington Post.