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Louisville, the seat of Jefferson county, is located on
the Ohio River at the Falls of the Ohio. It was founded
in 1778 by George Rogers Clark. In 1779 it was named for
Louis XVI of France and in 1780 it was chartered by the
state of Virginia and made the county seat. During the
early years the town was often referred to as Falls of
the Ohio. In 2000 voters in Louisville and Jefferson
county approved a merged city-county government to be
known as Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government,
or Louisville Metro for short, effective in 2003. The
other incorporated areas in Jefferson county remain
independent. The Louisville post office opened in 1795.
The population in 1990 was 269,063.
Louisville as seen from the Indiana side
of the river.
Louisville is the home of the University of
Louisville and Jefferson Community and Technical
College.
The map above shows only the approximate boundary of
Louisville. Most of Jefferson county is urban and there
are more than ninety incorporated cities in the county,
some of which are completely surrounded by Louisville
Metro.
From Frances Trollope's Domestic Manners of the
Americans (1832) describing her visit in the winter
of 1828.
Louisville is a considerable town, prettily situated
on the Kentucky, or south side of the Ohio; we spent
some hours in seeing all it had to show; and had I not
been told that a fever often rages there during the warm
season, I should have liked to pass some months there
for the purpose of exploring the beautiful country in
its vicinity. Frankfort and Lexington are both towns
worth visiting; though from their being out of the way
places I never got to either. The first is the seat of
the state government of Kentucky, and the last is, I was
told, the residence of several independent families,
who, with more leisure than is usually enjoyed in
America, have its natural accompaniment, more
refinement.
The falls of the Ohio are about a mile below
Louisville, and produce a rapid too sudden for the boats
to pass, except in the rainy season. The passengers are
obliged to get out below them, and travel by land to
Louisville, where they find other vessels ready to
receive them for the remainder of the voyage. We were
spared this inconvenience by the water being too high
for the rapid to be much felt, and it will soon be
altogether removed by the Louisville canal coming into
operation, which will permit the steam-boats to continue
their progress from below the falls to the town.
The scenery on the Kentucky side is much finer than
on that of Indiana, or Ohio. The state of Kentucky was
the darling spot of many tribes of Indians, and was
reserved among them as a common hunting-ground; it is
said, that they cannot yet name it without emotion, and
that they have a sad and wild lament that they still
chant to its memory. But their exclusion thence is of no
recent date; Kentucky has been longer settled than the
Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio; and it appears not only more
highly cultivated, but more fertile and more picturesque
than either. I have rarely seen richer pastures than
those of Kentucky. The forest-trees, where not too
crowded, are of magnificent growth; and the crops are
glorious and abundant, where the thriftless husbandry
has not worn out the soil by an unvarying succession of
exhausting crops. We were shown ground which had borne
abundant crops of wheat for twenty successive years; but
a much shorter period suffices to exhaust the ground,
when it is made to produce tobacco without the
intermission of some other crop.
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