Kentucky
State in south-central USA; nicknamed Bluegrass State
Area:
104,700 sq km/40,414 sq mi
Capital:
Frankfort
Towns and Cities:
Louisville, Lexington, Owensboro, Covington, Bowling Green
Physical:
Ohio and Kentucky rivers; Cumberland Gap National Park; the bluegrass
country; Daniel Boone National Forest; Red River Gorge; Breaks Interstate
Park; Mammoth Cave National Park (main cave 6.5 km/4 mi long, up to
38 m/125 ft high, where Native American councils were once held), a
World Heritage Site
Features:
Racehorse breeding, with over 400 horse farms, including Calumet, Spendthrift,
Normany; the mansion at Manchester said to be the inspiration for Tara
in Gone with the Wind; parks landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted, including
Shawnee Park; Abraham Lincoln's birthplace at Hodgenville; Shaker Village
of Pleasant Hill, Harrodsburg; Louisville, with 19th-century cast- iron
architecture in West Main Street (including the Hart Block, 1884), Jefferson
County Courthouse (1835), the Cathedral of the Assumption (1849-52),
Farmington (1810, designed by Thomas Jefferson), the Cherokee Triangle
(large houses built 1870-1910), the American Life and Accident Building
(1973, designed by Mies van der Rohe), the Humana Building (1985), and
the Kentucky Derby Museum; Bardstown, the Colonial mansion visited by
Stephen Foster in 1852, site of his song `My Old Kentucky Home´; Gratz
Park historic district in Lexington, with two houses from 1814; Transylvania
University (1780), the first college to be founded west of the Alleghenies;
the Kentucky Derby, run at Churchill Downs, Louisville; Fort Knox, the
US gold bullion depository; Maker's Mark Distillery; Jim Beam American
Outpost Museum
Industries:
Tobacco, cereals, textiles, coal, whisky, horses, transport vehicles
Population:
(1995) 3,860,200
Famous People:
Muhammad Ali, Daniel Boone, Louis D Brandeis, Kit Carson, Henry Clay,
D W Griffith, Thomas Hunt Morgan, Harland ` Colonel´ Sanders, Robert
Penn Warren
History:
Kentucky was the first region west of the Alleghenies settled by American
pioneers. James Harrod founded Harrodsburg in 1774; in 1775 Daniel
Boone, who blazed his Wilderness Trail 1767, founded Boonesboro.
Originally part of Virginia, Kentucky became a state in 1792.
Badly divided over the slavery question, the state was racked
by guerrilla warfare and partisan feuds during the American Civil
War. In 1900 Kentucky ranked first among Southern states in income
per head of population, but wealth was divided unevenly, and the
Great Depression of the 1930s hit hard; by 1940 Kentucky was last
among states in income per head of population. Although it remains
one of the poorest states, better roads, education, television,
and government programmes have relieved the isolation of its rural
communities.
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