Founding
county seat of Jefferson County, Kentucky, United States
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Louisville is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, sixth-most populous city in the Southeast, and the 27th-most-populous city in the United States. By land area, it is the country's 24th-largest city; however, by population density, it is the 265th most dense city. Louisville is the historical county seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana state line.
Since 2003, Louisville and Jefferson County have shared the same borders following a city-county merger. The consolidated government is officially called the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government, commonly known as Louisville Metro. The term "Jefferson County" is still used in some contexts, especially for incorporated cities outside the "balance" area that defines Louisville proper. The total population of the consolidated area was 782,969 at the 2020 census, while the balance area (excluding other incorporated cities) had a population of 633,045 and is often cited in national statistics. The Louisville metropolitan area, which includes 12 surrounding counties in Kentucky and Southern Indiana, has 1.39 million residents and is the 43rd-largest metropolitan area in the U.S.
Named after King Louis XVI of France, Louisville was founded in 1778 by George Rogers Clark, making it one of the oldest cities west of the Appalachians. With the nearby Falls of the Ohio as the only major obstruction to river traffic between the upper Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico, the settlement first grew as a portage site. It was the founding city of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which grew into a 6,000-mile (9,700 km) system across 13 states. Today, the city is known as the home of boxer Muhammad Ali, the Kentucky Derby, Kentucky Fried Chicken, the University of Louisville and its Cardinals, Louisville Slugger baseball bats, and Fortune 500 companies Humana, BrightSpring Health Services and Yum! Brands. Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, the city's main commercial airport, hosts UPS's worldwide hub.
The proper pronunciation of the name of Louisville is widely debated. The three most popular pronunciations are:
All three are generally considered acceptable; the Louisville Visitor Center says that only the rare LOO-iss-vil is completely unacceptable (though it is the correct pronunciation for the names of several minor cities with that name). There are also acceptable hybrid ways of saying the name, such as LOO-ə-vil, a mixture of the first and second pronunciations.
The LOO-ə-vəl and LUUV-əl are common local pronunciations. LOO-ee-vil, while respecting the proper pronunciation of the name of the French king who gave Louisville its name, is significantly less common among locals, though some locals do use this pronunciation. It is, however, frequently used by those not from the area. In 2001, local journalist and historian George H. Yater noted that older natives tended toward the second pronunciation, and that both the first and second pronunciations were used equally in local radio and television broadcasting; however, new personalities were taught that the first one was "correct".
The history of Louisville spans hundreds of years, and has been influenced by the area's geography and proximity to the Falls of the Ohio River.
Since the Falls created a barrier to river travel, settlements grew at this portage point. The first European settlement in the vicinity of modern-day Louisville was on Corn Island in 1778 by Col. George Rogers Clark, credited as the founder of Louisville. Several landmarks in the community are named after him.
Two years later, in 1780, the Virginia General Assembly approved the town charter of Louisville. The city was named in honor of King Louis XVI of France, whose soldiers were then aiding Americans in the Revolutionary War. Early residents lived in forts to protect themselves from raids from the local indigenous population, but they moved out by the late 1780s. In 1803, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark organized their expedition across America in the town of Clarksville, Indiana at the present-day Falls of the Ohio opposite Louisville, Kentucky.
The city's early growth was influenced by the fact that river boats had to be unloaded and moved downriver before reaching the falls. By 1828, the population had grown to 7,000 and Louisville became an incorporated city.
Early Louisville was a major shipping port and enslaved African Americans worked in a variety of associated trades. The city was often a point of escape for fugitive slaves to the north, as Indiana was a free state.
During this point in the 1850s, the city was growing and vibrant, but that also came with negativity. It was the center of planning, supplies, recruiting, and transportation for numerous campaigns, especially in the Western Theater. Ethnic tensions rose, and on August 6, 1855, known as "Bloody Monday", Protestant mobs attacked German and Irish Catholic neighborhoods on election day, resulting in 22 deaths and widespread property damage. Then by 1861, the civil war had broken out. During the Civil War, Louisville was a major stronghold of Union forces, which kept Kentucky firmly in the Union. By the end of the war, the city of Louisville itself had not been attacked, although skirmishes and battles, including the battles of Perryville and Corydon, took place nearby. After the war, returning Confederate veterans largely took political control of the city, leading to the saying that Louisville joined the Confederacy after the war was over.
The first Kentucky Derby was held on May 17, 1875, at the Louisville Jockey Club track (later renamed Churchill Downs). The Derby was originally shepherded by Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr., the grandson of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and grandnephew of the city's founder George Rogers Clark. Horse racing had a strong tradition in Kentucky, whose Inner Bluegrass Region had been a center of breeding high-quality livestock throughout the 19th century. Ten thousand spectators watched the first Derby, which Aristides won.
On March 27, 1890, the city was devastated and its downtown nearly destroyed when what scientists now estimate was an F4 tornado tore through as part of the middle Mississippi Valley tornado outbreak. It is estimated that between 74 and 120 people were killed and 200 were injured. The damage cost the city $2.5 million (equivalent to $69 million in 2019). Established in 1896, Neighborhood House Louisville was the first settlement movement house in the state.
Following the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, freed slaves settled in a neighborhood of Louisville called Little Africa, nicknamed "the gateway to the South", near the present neighborhood of Park DuValle. The neighborhood was described as a "thriving community" by the 1920s, and declined between the 1940s and 1950s.
In 1914, the city of Louisville passed a racially based residential zoning code, following Baltimore, Atlanta, and a handful of cities in the Carolinas. The NAACP challenged the ordinance in two cases. Two weeks after the ordinance was enacted, an African-American named Arthur Harris moved into a house on a block designated for whites. He was prosecuted and found guilty. The second case was planned to create a test case. William Warley, the president of the local chapter of the NAACP, tendered a purchase offer on a white block from Charles Buchanan, a white real estate agent. Warley also wrote a letter declaring his intention to build a house on that lot and reside there. With the understanding that the Louisville ordinance made it illegal for him to live there, Warley withheld payment, setting in motion a breach of contract suit by Buchanan. By 1917 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Buchanan v. Warley. The court struck down the Louisville residential segregation ordinance, ruling that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause.
In 1917, shortly after the United States' entry into World War I, Louisville was selected as the site of Camp Zachary Taylor. Camp Taylor was one of the country's largest World War I training camps. It was home of the 84th Infantry Division and trained over 150,000 men by the end of war, including F. Scott Fitzgerald. The camp was closed in 1921. Many of the buildings and infrastructure in the Camp Taylor neighborhood of Louisville are there as a result of the training camp.
In 1929, Louisville completed the lock and dam in the Falls of the Ohio and the city began referring to itself as "where Northern enterprise and Southern hospitality meet". Between the industrial boom of that year and through the Great Depression, Louisville gained 15,000 new residents, about 3% of them black, most fleeing poverty in rural areas.
Throughout January 1937, 19.17 inches (48.7 cm) of rain fell in Louisville, and by January 27, the Ohio River crested at a record 57.15 feet (17.42 m), almost 30 feet (9.1 m) above flood stage. These events triggered the "Great Flood of 1937", which lasted into early February. The flood submerged 60–70 percent of the city, caused complete loss of power for four days, and forced the evacuation of 175,000 or 230,000 residents, depending on sources. 90 people died as a result of the flood. This led to dramatic changes in where residents lived. After the flood, the areas of high elevation in the eastern part of the city had decades of residential growth. Today, the city is protected by numerous flood walls.
Louisville was a center for factory war production during World War II. In May 1942, the U.S. government assigned the Curtiss-Wright Aircraft Company, a war plant located at Louisville's air field, for wartime aircraft production. The factory produced the C-46 Commando cargo plane, among other aircraft. In 1946, the factory was sold to International Harvester, which began large-scale production of tractors and agricultural equipment. In 1950, the Census Bureau reported Louisville's population as 84.3% white and 15.6% black.
Throughout the 1940s, Louisville had more black police officers than any other Southern city, though they were allowed to patrol only black districts. This, in part, made Louisville seem like a more racially progressive city than other Southern cities, although only when black citizens accepted a lower status than white citizens. Many historians have referred to this "veil" of segregation as a "polite" racism. Historian George Wright stated that polite racism "often deluded both blacks and well-meaning whites into believing that real progress was being made in their city". For example, in the city Jim Crow practices were not maintained by law so much as by custom.
Similar to many other older American cities, Louisville began to experience a movement of people and businesses to the suburbs in the 1960s and 1970s. Middle class residents used newly built freeways and interstate highways to commute to work, moving into more distant but newer housing. Because of tax laws, businesses found it cheaper to build new rather than renovate older buildings. Economic changes included a decline in local manufacturing. The West End and older areas of the South End, in particular, began to decline economically as many local factories closed.
In 1974, a major (F4) tornado hit Louisville as part of the 1974 Super Outbreak of tornadoes that struck 13 states. It covered 21 miles (34 km) and destroyed several hundred homes in the Louisville area, causing two deaths.
Since the 1980s, many of the city's urban neighborhoods have been revitalized into areas popular with young professionals and college students. The greatest change has occurred along the Bardstown Road/Baxter Avenue and Frankfort Avenue corridors as well as the Old Louisville neighborhood. In recent years, such change has also occurred in the East Market District (NuLu).
Since the late 1990s, Downtown has experienced significant residential, tourist and retail growth. Major new sports complexes built include KFC Yum! Center (2010), Louisville Slugger Field (2000), and Lynn Family Stadium (2020). Further, the downtown area has seen the conversion of riverfront industrial sites into Waterfront Park, openings of varied museums (see Museums, galleries and interpretive centers below), and the refurbishing of the former Galleria into the entertainment complex Fourth Street Live!, which opened in 2004.
On March 13, 2020, four plainclothed officers from Louisville Metro Police Department executed a "no-knock" search warrant which led to the killing of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American woman. For months afterward, Taylor's family, members of the local community, and people around the world protested to demand that officers involved in the shooting be fired and criminally charged. These protests and demonstrations coincided and intertwined with the international George Floyd protests, as well as the Black Lives Matter movement and a broader movement of racial unrest. As a result of the incident, the police chief was fired and four officers received federal charges, but no significant systemic changes were made.
On April 10, 2023, a mass shooting occurred at the Old National Bank, killing five people, and injuring nine others. The suspect, who was a bank employee and who officials said was livestreaming the rampage, was killed by the police after exchanging fire with them.
On November 4, 2025, a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 cargo plane operating as UPS Airlines Flight 2976 crashed shortly after takeoff from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, killing 14 people, injuring 15, and igniting a large fire. Several buildings near the airport, including a petroleum recycling center, were struck or set on fire. The cause of the crash is under investigation.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Louisville, Kentucky”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.