If you've driven down highway 15 in Breathitt County, you may have seen the sign for the Fort Ancient village.

This site is where prehistoric Native American groups lived nearly 3000 years ago.

The village was first discovered in the 1980s and is now under the stewardship of the Craig on Historic Preservation nonprofit.

Last week, construction began on the Craig on Fort Ancient Village Learning Center, where students in eastern Kentucky will be able to learn more about the first inhabitants of Breathitt County.

The excavations were done here in 86 and 87, 1986 87.

And they, they excavated 3000 artifacts from the different building areas and so forth that were here.

So this is a very ancient property.

People were living here in the early woodland period, which is 1000 BC.

The later era, Fort Ancient was.

They were farmers, hunter gatherers.

They grew corn, beans and squash.

The three sisters.

So they, they were farmers.

And they lived here until about 1400 A.D.

and then they vanished.

The four ancient culture just left without any one and left no descendants.

According to the records, they left no descendants.

The closest lineal tribe is probably the Shawnee.

You know, the land is so important here because it was.

It was sacred.

It was home to generations of, first inhabitants here in eastern Kentucky.

And over the years, so much of that history had been erased or simply ignored.

This is an important site for us to embrace what was here long before the first Europeans came here.

And this site is important that we preserve it, and more importantly, that we interpret it for our current generation and for future generations.

This will be a building that we will get started, will equip the inside with digital wall displays.

Going back 8000 years.

Will have a lot of things in the building.

Artifacts, all the artifacts that were Webb Museum in Lexington, they're excavated from here.

We're bringing them back.

We have a letter from them, but we get those artifacts back for display here in the.

That's the reason we're calling to Craig and Learning Center.

Instead of a museum.

Museum.

You go in, you can't touch things here.

You'll be able to pick up a piece of it and touch it and feel and learn what it was.

So we're proud to be called a Craig and Learning Center.

So many other sites similar to this have been destroyed through the generations.

So this is a unique opportunity for us to not only, preserve what's here, but more importantly, to bring in school children, bring in people from the community to bring in people from eastern Kentucky to see and to understand and to feel and to learn.

You learn so much by walking in the footsteps of those that have come before us.

And here you get an opportunity to go down into the village, what's left of the village, on the riverbank, and to walk around here.

We know 8020 2500 years ago.

There were native tribes living here, loving here, and spending time here as families.

It's.

The name Creggan is a combination of the name Kanan Reagan, an industrialist who opened the Olin Chemical Company in the area in the early 20th century, providing hundreds of jobs for the community at the time, named the area Creggan in honor of him.