With the exception of gravel mining, which steadily encroaches on the town, Petersburg has not witnessed any industry on a scale comparable to the distillery that dominated for nearly a century. The distillery began as a small-scale steam powered mill. The distillery prospered and grew to mammoth proportions by the eve of the Civil War.
The last three decades of the 19th century was the heyday of the distillery. The complex vastly expanded and nearly quadrupled its capacity making it the largest distillery in Kentucky and one of the largest in the nation. However, like so many other Kentucky distilleries, the Petersburg Distillery fell victim to the Kentucky Distilleries & Warehouse Company, which consolidated and closed dozens of Kentucky distilleries in the first two decades of the 20th century.
