The state is home to the world's longest
cave system in
Mammoth Cave National Park, as well as the greatest length of navigable waterways and streams in the
contiguous United States, and the two largest artificial lakes east of the
Mississippi River. Kentucky is also known for its
culture, which includes
horse racing,
bourbon,
moonshine,
coal,
My Old Kentucky Home State Park,
automobile manufacturing,
tobacco,
southern cuisine,
barbecue,
bluegrass music,
college basketball,
Louisville Slugger baseball bats,
Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the
Kentucky Colonel.
Kentucky was admitted into the Union as the 15th state on June 1, 1792,
splitting from Virginia in the process.
[6] It is known as the "Bluegrass State", a nickname based on
Kentucky bluegrass, a species of green grass introduced by European settlers for the purpose of grazing in pastures, which has supported the thoroughbred horse industry in the center of the state.
[7] Historically, it was known for excellent farming conditions for this reason and the development of large tobacco plantations akin to those in Virginia and North Carolina in the central and western parts of the state with the use of enslaved labor during the Antebellum South and Civil War period. Kentucky ranks 5th nationally in goat farming, 8th in
beef cattle production,
[8] and 14th in corn production.
[9] Kentucky has also been a long-standing major center of the
tobacco industry. Today, Kentucky's economy has expanded to importance in non-agricuIturaI sectors, including auto manufacturing, energy fuel production, and medical facilities.
[10] The state ranks 4th among US states in the number of automobiles and trucks assembled.
[11]
Kentucky (
kən-TUK-ee,
ken-),
[5] officially the
Commonwealth of Kentucky,
[c] is a
state in the
Southeastern region of the
United States and one of the states of the
Upper South. Kentucky borders
Illinois,
Indiana, and
Ohio to the north,
West Virginia to the northeast,
Virginia to the east,
Tennessee to the south, and
Missouri to the west. Its northern border is defined by the
Ohio River. Its capital is
Frankfort and its largest city is
Louisville. Its population was approximately 4.5 million in 2020
[update].
[2]About Kentucky
The first archaeological evidence of human occupation of Kentucky is approximately 9500BCE, and it was Clovis culture, primitive hunter-gatherers with stone tools. Around 1800 BCE, a gradual transition began from a hunter-gatherer economy to agriculturalism. Around 900 CE, a Mississippian culture took root in western and central Kentucky; by contrast, a Fort Ancient culture appeared in eastern Kentucky. While the two had many similarities, the distinctive ceremonial earthwork mounds constructed in the former's centers were not part of the culture of the latter. Fort Ancient settlements depended largely on corn, beans, and squash, and practiced a system of agriculture that prevented ecological degradation by rotating crops, burning sections of forest to create ideal habitat for wild game, relocating villages every 10–30 years, and continually shifting the location of fields to maintain plots of land in various stages of ecological succession.
In about the 10th century, the Kentucky native people's variety of corn became highly productive, supplanting the Eastern Agricultural Complex, and replaced it with a maize-based agriculture in the Mississippian era.
As of the 16th century, what became Kentucky was home to tribes from diverse linguistic groups. The Kispoko, an Algonquian-speaking tribe controlled much of the interior of the state.
French explorers in the 17th century documented numerous tribes living in Kentucky until the Beaver Wars in the 1670s; however, by the time that European colonial explorers and settlers began entering Kentucky in greater numbers in the mid-18th century, there were no major Native American settlements in the region.
The Chickasaw had territory up to the confluence of Mississippi and Ohio rivers. During a period known as the Beaver Wars (1640–1680), another Algonquian tribe called the Maumee, or Mascouten was chased out of southern Michigan. The vast majority of them moved to Kentucky, pushing the Kispoko east and war broke out with the Tutelo of North Carolina and Virginia that pushed them further north and east. The Maumee were closely related to the Miami from Indiana. Later, the Kispoko merged with the Shawnee, who migrated from the east and the Ohio River valley.
European explorers arrived in Kentucky possibly as early as 1671. While French explorers surely spied Kentucky during expeditions on the Mississippi, there is no evidence French or Spanish explorers set foot in the lands south of the Ohio, notwithstanding speculations about Hernando de Soto and Robert de la Salle. The terrain in those days was not surveyed, so there is some uncertainty whether and to what extent the early English explorers out of Virginia set foot on the land. Confounding the issue is that the region south of the Ohio/Allegheny later known as Kentucke country was larger than the state of Kentucky today, encompassing most of today's West Virginia and (vaguely) part of southwestern Pennsylvania. Notable expeditions were Batts and Fallam 1671, Needham and Arthur 1673.
Dr. Thomas Walker and surveyor Christopher Gist surveyed the area now known as Kentucky in 1750 and 1751.
As more settlers entered the area, warfare broke out with the Native Americans over their traditional hunting grounds.
June 16, 1774, James Harrod founded Harrod's Town (modern Harrodsburg). The settlement was abandoned during the conflict period of Dunmore's War, and resettled in March, 1775, becoming the first permanent European settlement in Kentucky. It was followed within months by Boone's Station, Logan's Fort and Lexington before Kentucky was organized.
This period was the time of Daniel Boone's legendary expeditions starting in 1767 through the Cumberland Gap and down the Kentucky River to reach the bluegrass heartland of Kentucky.
While the Cherokee did not settle in Kentucky, they hunted there. They relinquished their hunting rights there in an extra-legal private contract with speculator Richard Henderson called Treaty of Sycamore Shoals in 1775.
On December 31, 1776, by an act of the Virginia General Assembly, the portion of Fincastle County west of the Big Sandy River (including today's Tug Fork tributary) terminating at the North Carolina border (today Tennessee) extending to the Mississippi River, previously most of what was known as Kentucky (or Kentucke) country, was split off into its own county of Kentucky. Harrod's Town (Oldtown as it was known at the time) was named the county seat.
A 1790 U.S. government report states that 1,500 Kentucky settlers had been killed by Native Americans since the end of the Revolutionary War.
The county was subdivided into Jefferson, Lincoln and Fayette Counties in 1780, but continued to be administered as the District of Kentucky even as new counties were split off.
On several occasions the region's residents petitioned the General Assembly and the Confederation Congress for separation from Virginia and statehood. Ten constitutional conventions were held in Danville between 1784 and 1792.
One petition, which had Virginia's assent, came before the Confederation Congress in early July 1788. Unfortunately, its consideration came up a day after word of New Hampshire's all-important ninth ratification of the proposed Constitution, thus establishing it as the new framework of governance for the United States. In light of this development, Congress thought that it would be "unadvisable" to admit Kentucky into the Union, as it could do so "under the Articles of Confederation" only, but not "under the Constitution", and so declined to take action.
On December 18, 1789, Virginia again gave its consent to Kentucky statehood. The United States Congress gave its approval on February 4, 1791. (This occurred two weeks before Congress approved Vermont's petition for statehood.) Kentucky officially became the fifteenth state in the Union on June 1, 1792. Isaac Shelby, a military veteran from Virginia, was elected its first Governor.
Central Kentucky, the bluegrass region, as well as western Kentucky, were the areas of the state with the most slave owners. Planters cultivated tobacco and hemp (see Hemp in Kentucky) on plantations with the use of enslaved labor, and were noted for their quality livestock. During the 19th century, Kentucky slaveholders began to sell unneeded slaves to the Deep South, with Louisville becoming a major slave market and departure port for slaves being transported downriver.
Kentucky was one of the Southern border states during the American Civil War, and it remained neutral within the Union. Despite this, representatives from 68 of 110 counties met at Russellville calling themselves the "Convention of the People of Kentucky" and passed an Ordinance of Secession on November 20, 1861. They established a Confederate government of Kentucky with its capital in Bowling Green, and Kentucky was officially admitted into the Confederacy on December 10, 1861, as the 13th Confederate state with full recognition in Richmond. The Confederate shadow government was never popularly elected statewide, though 116 delegates were sent representing 68 Kentucky counties which at the time made up a little over half the territory of the Commonwealth to the Russellville Convention in 1861, and were occupied and governed by the Confederacy at some point in the duration of the war, and Kentucky had full representation within the Confederate Government. Although Confederate forces briefly controlled Frankfort, they were expelled by Union forces before a Confederate government could be installed in the state capital. After the expulsion of Confederate forces after the Battle of Perryville, this government operated in-exile. Though it existed throughout the war, Kentucky's provisional government only had governing authority in areas of Kentucky under direct Confederate control and had very little effect on the events in the Commonwealth or in the war once they were driven out of the state.
Kentucky remained officially "neutral" throughout the war[citation needed] due to the Southern Unionists sympathies of a majority of the Commonwealth's citizens who were split between the struggle of Kentucky's sister Southern States fully in the Confederate States of America and a continued loyalty to the Unionist cause that was also prevalent in other areas of the South such as in East Tennessee, West Virginia, Western North Carolina, and others. Despite this, some 21st-century Kentuckians observe Confederate Memorial Day on Confederate leader Jefferson Davis' birthday, June 3, and participate in Confederate battle re-enactments. Both Davis and U.S. president Abraham Lincoln were born in Kentucky. John C. Breckinridge, the 14th and youngest-ever Vice President was born in Lexington, Kentucky at Cabell's Dale Farm. Breckenridge was expelled from the U. S. Senate for his support of the Confederacy.
On January 30, 1900, Governor William Goebel, flanked by two bodyguards, was mortally wounded by an assassin while walking to the State Capitol in downtown Frankfort. Goebel was contesting the Kentucky gubernatorial election of 1899, which William S. Taylor was initially believed to have won. For several months, J. C. W. Beckham, Goebel's running mate, and Taylor fought over who was the legal governor until the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in May in favor of Beckham. After fleeing to Indiana, Taylor was indicted as a co-conspirator in Goebel's assassination. Goebel is the only governor of a U.S. state to have been assassinated while in office.
The Black Patch Tobacco Wars, a vigilante action, occurred in Western Kentucky in the early 20th century. As a result of the tobacco industry monopoly, tobacco farmers in the area were forced to sell their crops at prices that were too low. Many local farmers and activists united in a refusal to sell their crops to the major tobacco companies.
An Association meeting occurred in downtown Guthrie, where a vigilante wing of "Night Riders", formed. The riders terrorized farmers who sold their tobacco at the low prices demanded by the tobacco corporations. They burned several tobacco warehouses throughout the area, stretching as far west as Hopkinsville to Princeton. In the later period of their operation, they were known to physically assault farmers who broke the boycott. Governor Augustus E. Willson declared martial law and deployed the Kentucky National Guard to end the wars.