Bagdad: How a Shelby County Rail Stop Took Over Consolation

Earlier settlers clustered at Consolation, roughly a mile east, with a post office from 1849; once the depot and mill sat on the line, people drifted west and Consolation faded.

On October 12, 1861, the Christiansburg post office moved to the station and took the name Bagdad, with Richard Radford as first postmaster. The name's origin is still unsettled—miller's-son folklore, a nickname for Radford, or something else—but the place became a shipping point for flour, meal, livestock, and tobacco. Bagdad still sits at KY 12 and 395, about eleven miles northeast of Shelbyville, at the headwaters of Sixmile and Guist Creeks.