Boone County Public Library: Where Imagination Takes Flight
The now extinct town of Middle Creek was located in the Belleview Precinct near the scenic Boone Cliffs (now a nature preserve). During the 19th century the thriving town included five mills, a distillery, a store, a post office and a Baptist church.
One of the leading citizens of Middle Creek was miller Thomas Zane Roberts, a talented woodworker whose workmanship graces some of Boone County's finest antebellum residences. His son, also named Thomas Zane Roberts, was a brilliant and eccentric farmer, teacher and inventor. The younger Roberts devised and built a remarkable solar clock based on celestial observations calculated in his backyard observatory.
Although the other buildings of Middle Creek are long gone, the Roberts house and mill still stand.