Cloverport is a home rule-class city[2] in Breckinridge County, Kentucky, United States, on the banks of the Ohio River.

Established around 1798[4][5] (or possibly 1808[6]) on the east side of where Clover Creek meets the Ohio River.

The town was the site of the ferry where, in 1816, Jacob Weatherholt piloted the family of Abraham Lincoln, then seven, across the Ohio River on its way to a newly acquired farm in Spencer County, Indiana.

[7] Around 1820 a building was constructed that became the town's first school and was shared by the Baptist and Methodist congregations as a church on Sundays.

The town's first graveyard, known as the Scott Cemetery, was beside this building which was located south of present Murray Avenue and east of Cherry Street.

Seven years before, in 1821, the Kentucky Legislature had built a toll road between the town and Bowling Green.

[10][11] The town was formally incorporated by an act of the state assembly in 1860[5] and expanded to take in the growing number of homes on the west side of Clover Creek.

The Breckenridge News was started by John D. Babbage and run by his family until 1950 when it was sold to George and Edith Wilson.

The Wilsons merged the paper with their other newspaper, the Irvington Herald, and formed the Breckinridge County Herald-News in 1956.

[14] The dispute was settled out of court with the railroad paying back the original $20,000 plus returning the ten acres of land to the city.

Former United States Supreme Court Justice Wiley Blount Rutledge was born at nearby Tar Springs on July 20, 1894.

On March 13, 1901, a fire swept through the city leaving about half of the residents homeless and destroying almost all of the business buildings, including two full American Tobacco Company warehouses.

[22] Another fire struck Cloverport on March 14, 1910, and destroyed many homes on the east side of town.

At the time, the closest fire truck was in Owensboro and men from the Louisville, Henderson, and St. Louis Railroad repair yard were credited with saving many homes.

This combined congregation purchased land for their new building in 1972 at their current site on south Elm Street.

It was reported that the flood waters were seven feet over the Tar Fork bridge and neck deep on a horse at Hites Run.

[36] Beginning in 1900, St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church operated a parochial school in the city.

The original school only lasted a couple of months but it was re-opened in 1916 with teaching duties being taken over my the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph.