Troy’s riverfront landmarks tell the story of Perry County history

Troy’s most important landmarks sit close to the Ohio River because the town itself grew there. At Water Street and Washington Street, a historic house, a public boat dock, a hilltop Christ statue, and a modern veterans memorial wall show how Perry County’s riverfront history still shapes the way Troy sees itself. The places are close enough to visit in one trip, but each one tells a different part of the same story: commerce, transportation, settlement, devotion, and public memory.

Start at the riverfront core

If you want to understand Troy as an Ohio River community, the clearest starting point is the stretch around Water Street and Washington Street. That is where the town’s river-facing history is most visible, and where the old commercial center still connects to the river corridor that made settlement possible. Troy’s own attractions keep returning to that riverfront because the town’s identity was built around access, movement, and the practical business of getting goods and people to and from the water.

The setting matters as much as the buildings. The Ohio River was not just a backdrop for Troy’s early growth; it was the route that linked Perry County to trade and travel, and the landmarks on and above the bluff still reflect that reality. A visitor can see how the town moved from river landing to layered historic district without having to leave a few blocks of the riverfront.

The Nester House, also known as Riverplace, carries the deepest local history

The Nester House, also called Family Grocerie, Union Hotel, and Riverplace, is the site that best captures Troy’s layered past. The lot was purchased in 1841, and the National Register listing dates the main building to about 1863, with a later rear addition from the late 1870s or mid-1880s. Built from local sandstone, it has served as a grocery store, residence, hotel, and museum, which is exactly the sort of reuse that marks a true river town building that had to adapt as Troy changed around it.

Its most striking detail is the tunnel from the cellar to a barn two blocks north, which was used in the Underground Railroad. That detail pushes the building beyond architecture or commerce and into the moral history of the county. The tunnel was filled in during the 1960s, but the building’s role in that earlier network still gives Riverplace a meaning that reaches far past its walls.

The house was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, and it has also been remodeled since Jim and Joyce Boerste Efinger purchased it in 1988. That sequence tells an important preservation story of its own. The building did not survive as a museum piece untouched; it endured because people kept using it, then restored it, then kept it visible in the riverfront landscape that once made it valuable in the first place.

Christ of the Ohio turns the bluff into a landmark visible from the river and highway

A short distance away, Christ of the Ohio gives Troy one of its most recognizable silhouettes. Dr. and Mrs. N.A. James of Tell City erected the statue in 1956 on the highest point of their property overlooking the Ohio River at their summer home in Troy. It was blessed and dedicated on May 1, 1956, by Archbishop Paul C. Schulte, with Archabbot Bonaventure Knaebel present, tying the site to both the Archdiocese of Indianapolis and St. Meinrad’s religious presence in the region.

The statue is visible for miles around, including from the highway and across the Ohio River, which is part of what made it such an effective landmark. Some documentation describes it as 11 feet 4 inches tall and about 6,200 pounds, with a plaque crediting German artist Herbert Jogerst. Whether seen as a devotional image or a navigation point on the bluff, it was designed to be noticed from far beyond the property line.

That visibility matters in Troy because it links faith with river life. The statue looks over the same corridor that carried barges, ferry traffic, and travelers for generations, and its placement on Fulton Hill turns the landscape itself into part of the town’s story. In a river community, a landmark that can be seen from the water becomes part of the way people read the place.

The Troy Boat Dock keeps the river part of everyday public life

Not every landmark in Troy is about preservation alone. The Troy Boat Dock gives residents and visitors direct public access to the Ohio River, and the town describes it as one of the largest and nicest access sites in the county, with ample parking. That combination of access and convenience matters because it shows that the river is still usable, not only commemorated.

In a town shaped by the water, a boat dock does more than support recreation. It keeps the river in daily view as a working corridor and public space, which is exactly why Troy’s heritage stops feel complete only when the dock is included. The historic buildings explain where the town came from; the dock shows that the river remains present in how people move, gather, and experience the place now.

The Veterans Memorial Wall adds a newer layer of civic memory

Next to Christ of the Ohio, the 2023 Veterans Memorial Wall extends Troy’s riverfront story into the present. Linda Crawford wanted the memorial as a tribute to veterans in Troy, and Jeff Everly, the street superintendent, designed and constructed the wall in 2023. Placing it beside the Christ statue gives the site both river views and a setting for reflection.

That location is important because it folds contemporary civic memory into a historic river overlook. Troy did not isolate the new memorial in a park or a plaza detached from the rest of town history; it put the wall beside one of its best-known landmarks, where residents already associate the bluff with visibility and meaning. The result is a public space that joins remembrance to the older layers of river identity rather than competing with them.

Taken together, these places show why Troy is more than a small stop along the Ohio River. The Nester House, Christ of the Ohio, the Troy Boat Dock, and the Veterans Memorial Wall each reveal a different part of Perry County’s history, but they also work together as one riverfront narrative. In Troy, the past is not sealed off in a museum case. It still stands on the bluff, opens onto the water, and shapes the town’s sense of itself.