Nestled in the middle of nowhere right off Highway 68 in Marion County,
Kentucky, lays the grave of a community buried not only under dirt and gravel,
but also under layers and layers of history. The name on the tombstone reads
Riley Station, 1866-1964. In 1866 Riley Station was quite a flourishing
community, population about 125 - majority black, but everybody just got along.
 
Survival was the name of their game. In 1907 the L&N Railroad helped fund a
well there during a drought. It is a known fact that the outlaw Jesse James spent a night in a hotel at the end of Riley Road. There were bad boys, births, divorces, epidemics, fires, ghost stories, love stories, marriages, murders and an out-door casino all right here in Riley. There have been several authors to put together historical facts but they never told the rest of the story.
 
Author Ruth Ann Johnson Fogle, granddaughter of John and Lula Crowdus,
was born there and introduces this series of Last Stop Riley: Prelude to a
documentary recounts many of these stories, her early life, and the fire that
nearly ended her career before she was old enough to know what it was going to be!