Fort Harrod was founded in June 1774 when James Harrod led a party of about thirty-five men to the site, establishing what is recognized as the first permanent Anglo-American settlement in Kentucky. The completed stockade enclosed a working frontier village rather than a purely military post: it contained several story-and-a-half log houses where families lived, a blacksmith shop where tools and hardware were forged and repaired, two springs that supplied water for residents and livestock, and one of Kentucky's earliest schoolhouses, where children received basic instruction. Corner blockhouses provided defensive cover, but daily life inside the walls centered on farming, craft work, child-rearing, and community governance. As the surrounding region stabilized, the settlement matured into the town of Harrodsburg, and the fort site itself hosted early county court proceedings around 1789 and 1790 as the area organized first into Lincoln County and then, from 1785, into Mercer County. The original fort structures did not survive, but the site was preserved as a public park; in 1934 the state completed a faithful reconstruction of the stockade, cabins, blockhouses, and blacksmith shop, and the park was dedicated with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in attendance. Today Old Fort Harrod State Park operates as a living-history museum and includes the adjacent Mansion Museum and a pioneer cemetery, preserving the site's identity as Kentucky's founding settlement.