Lexington was the fictional home to a popular comic strip
Editor’s Note: As Lexington celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the Herald-Leader and kentucky.com each day throughout 2025 will share interesting facts about our hometown. Compiled by Liz Carey, all are notable moments in the city’s history - some funny, some sad, others heartbreaking or celebratory, and some just downright strange.
Throughout the 1950s, newspaper readers keyed in on life in Lexington every day in the comics section with a strip drawn by Frank Godwin called “Rusty Riley.”
Devoted fans would find Rusty and his trusty dog, Flip, as they navigated life on a Kentucky horse farm just outside of Lexington.
Think of Rusty like a male Little Orphan Annie, only living on a horse farm instead of the Hudson Street Orphanage and Daddy Warbucks’ mansion.
The story started with Rusty living in an orphanage, with Flip, longing for the farm-life he loved – outdoors and around horses.
When a police officer comes to take Flip away, Rusty and the dog run away to the nearby Milestone Farm. After hiding in the stable, he’s discovered by the kindly farm foreman Tex Purdy.
When millionaire horseman Quentin Miles, the farm’s owner, gives Rusty a job and arranges for him to stay at the farm with Flip, Rusty’s dreams finally come true – life around horses on a farm.
Back then, for readers who were born after the turn of the 20th century, newspapers ran two, sometimes three pages of comics daily, with long-running stories of the main characters’ adventures.
According to Lexington Herald-Leader reporter John Cheves, “In story lines that lasted no more than a few weeks, Rusty and friends solved mysteries, prevented crimes and rescued hapless victims, often involving some facet of the horse industry.
“Although the cast traveled widely, much of the action took place in and around Lexington. Godwin worked in local references, like the Plug Horse Derby, a one-day fair at The Red Mile that was popular after World War II.”
The cartoon centered around Rusty and Tex, as his father-figure, as well as Patty, Mr. Miles’ daughter and horsewoman. The two friends encounter crooks and corruption, not to mention a scheming woman who is determined to make Mr. Milestone her husband, and no barn-waif is going to stop her.
Through it all, Rusty grows up in the world of horse racing and horse breeders as he tries to establish himself in a career as a jockey.
The strip appeared daily and on Sundays in hundreds of newspapers across the country. Godwin traveled to Lexington to get an idea of the horses and farms.
But Lexington residents reading the strip let him know how he got it wrong.
“Lexington readers initially complained to Godwin, who lived in New Hope, Pennsylvania, that he wasn’t drawing their community accurately. So, the artist made several trips over the next few years with his sketch pad, studying local farms and racetracks. The effort paid off,” Cheves wrote in 2015.
Godwin traveled several times to Lexington to get the horses and farms just right.
“For more than a week, he toured the central Kentucky horse farms, took pictures and made numerous sketches of the horses, fences, gates, barns, farm homes, horse cemeteries, country lanes, trees, and other references necessary to make his strip correct,” Dave Karlen wrote on his Comic Art Blog.
“He talked with the thoroughbred horsemen, standard-bred horsemen, saddle horsemen, racetrack officials and (reporters) to get all the information he needed. He also took many pictures in and around the Keeneland and Lexington Trotting Tracks, which were a couple of the sites he later used frequently in his comic strip.”
Part of the King Features Syndicate, the comic strip ran until Godwin’s death in 1959. Although Godwin died in August 1959, the daily strips ran until mid-September of that year. The Sunday strips continued to run until November 1959.
In 2013, Classic Comics Press released a bound book of reprints of the dailies from January 1948 through November 1949.
The strip ran from Jan. 26, 1948 to Nov. 1, 1959.