KENTUCKY

officially Commonwealth of Kentucky, constituent state of the United States of America. Rivers define Kentucky's boundaries except on the south, where it shares a border with Tennessee along a nearly straight line of about 425 miles (685 kilometres), and on its mountainous southeastern border with Virginia. The Tug and Big Sandy rivers separate it from West Virginia on the east and northeast. From the point where the Big Sandy empties into the Ohio River, the crested northern boundary cuts an irregular line across the country, following the Ohio and meeting the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to the north. Where the Ohio flows into the Mississippi, the short western edge of the state is separated by the Mississippi from Missouri. These boundaries encompass the state's area of 40,410 square miles (104,660 square kilometres). The capital, Frankfort, lies between the two major cities, Louisville, which is on the Ohio River, and Lexington. Long the home of various Indian tribes, Kentucky was settled by Daniel Boone and other frontiersmen in 1769. Its name probably derives from the Iroquois word for prairie. By 1792, when it was admitted as the 15th state of the Unionthe first west of the Appalachian MountainsKentucky had drawn nearly 75,000 settlers. Kentucky brings to mind images of coal mines, of the bourbon whiskey named for the county where it was developed and is still made, of white-suited colonels and their ladies sipping mint juleps on summertime verandas, of mountaineers and moonshiners, of horse breeding and the Kentucky Derby. Actually, Kentucky encompasses a curious mixture of poverty and wealth, ugliness and beauty, North and South. Several hundred lives have been lost in Kentucky's coal mines, and strip-mining has left countless hillsides to erode. Yet the seemingly endless landscape of white-railed horse pens and paddocks, characteristic of the rolling Bluegrass region around Lexington, symbolizes an unhurried and genteel way of life that looks more to Kentucky's ties with the pre-Civil War South than to its position in the industrial frenzy of the nation. By further contrast, northernmost Kentucky, with its predominantly German heritage and suburban pattern of development, belongs to metropolitan Cincinnati, Ohio. Kentucky has always existed in the middle: as a state looking back and ahead, as a crossroads for westward expansion, and as a split personality during the Civil War. It was the birthplace both of Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States, and of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States during that strife. The Upper South. constituent state of the United States of America, lying in the eastern south-central region of the country. Facing Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois across the Ohio River to the north, Kentucky is also bounded by West Virginia and Virginia on the east, Tennessee on the south, and Missouri on the west. The capital is Frankfort. The state extends about 425 miles (685 km) from east to west and 40 to 180 miles (65 to 290 km) north to south. The earliest human inhabitants were agricultural and hunting peoples who left burial mounds and other traces. For many centuries before the arrival of the white settlers, the Kentucky region was a hunting ground and battlefield for such Indian tribes as the Shawnee from the north, the Iroquois from the east, and the Cherokee from the south. Exploration by whites was relatively unsuccessful until Daniel Boone penetrated to the Bluegrass country in 1769. Following the American Revolution, immigrants poured down the rivers and traveled the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap. The original Kentucky settlements constituted a judicial district of Virginia, but the ties were severed in 1792, when Kentucky became the 15th state. The citizens were divided on the issue of slavery, but until the American Civil War, proslavery forces maintained control of the state government. Kentucky did not secede, and a majority of its troops fought on the side of the Union. In the Reconstruction period after the war, however, popular sentiment became strongly pro-South. Physiographically Kentucky can be divided into three main regions: (1) the Appalachian Highlands of the east, containing the great eastern coalfields of the Cumberland and Pine ranges; (2) the Interior Lowlands, containing the plains of the Bluegrass, the rounded hills of the Knobs, the karstic Pennyrile (Pennyroyal), and the Western Coal Field; and (3) the Coastal Plains containing the Purchase, the fertile northernmost extension of the Gulf Coastal Plain lying between the Tennessee, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers. The drainage pattern through Kentucky's low, rolling topography is highly dendritic, with most streams flowing generally northward into the Ohio River. The Kentucky climate is temperate with a mean annual temperature between 55 and 60 F (13 and 16 C). The growing season lasts from 176 to 197 days a year. Mean annual rainfall is about 45 inches (1,140 mm), evenly distributed throughout the year. Rich alluvial soils lie along the streams and rivers. From its early settlement, Kentucky has been a strongly rural state of small towns and crossroads. About one-half of the population is classified as rural, and only two cities, Louisville and Lexington, have populations greater than 200,000. The state's proportion of black population has steadily decreased since before the Civil War, by 1990 reaching only about 7 percent. The economy of Kentucky has been focused traditionally on tobacco farming, coal mining, and the manufacture of bourbon whiskey. Tobacco is still a major cash crop, but farm output also includes cattle and calves, dairy products, soybeans, corn (maize), and hogs. Kentucky ranks first nationally in the breeding of thoroughbred horses. Kentucky mines more bituminous coal than any other state. Petroleum, natural gas, asphalt, and iron ore are also among its mineral resources. An extensive system of scenic, multilane tollroads has been partly incorporated into the interstate-highway system. Barge traffic on the OhioMississippi system carries many of Kentucky's products to world and national markets. Railroads and airways crisscross the state. Fort Knox has been the gold bullion depository for the United States since 1936. Images of Kentuckians vary from leisurely colonels to hard-hatted coal miners. Unique state attractions include the annual running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs and the limestone anomalies of Mammoth Cave National Park. The state maintains a system of almost 100 vocational-education centres. The University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville are the largest universities. Area 40,409 square miles (104,659 square km). Pop. (1990) 3,685,296. Additional reading Federal Writers' Project, Kentucky: A Guide to the Bluegrass State (1939, reissued as The WPA Guide to Kentucky, 1996), still a useful source, looks at all aspects of Kentucky life. General geographic information may be found in P.P. Karan (ed.), Kentucky: A Regional Geography (1973), with discussions of each of the state's physical regions; Karl B. Raitz, The Kentucky Bluegrass: A Regional Profile and Guide (1980), with emphasis on people and settlements; and Wilford A. Bladen, A Geography of Kentucky: A Topical-Regional Overview (1984). P.P. Karan and Cotton Mather (eds.), Atlas of Kentucky (1977); and Richard Ulack, Karl Raitz, and Gyula Pauer (eds.), Atlas of Kentucky (1998), are thematic atlases. DeLorme Mapping Company, Kentucky Atlas & Gazetteer (1997), focuses on topography. Arthur C. McFarlan, Behind the Scenery in Kentucky (1958), is an interesting account of how Kentucky's caves, natural bridges, waterfalls, and other physical features were formed. Robert M. Rennick, Kentucky Place Names (1984), combines geography and history. Jack E. Weller, Yesterday's People: Life in Contemporary Appalachia (1965), presents a sympathetic analysis of social conditions. Harry M. Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area (1963), The Watches of the Night (1976), and A Darkness at Dawn: Appalachian Kentucky and the Future (1976), focus on political and social conditions in eastern Kentucky. The magazine Back Home in Kentucky (bimonthly) prints articles on the people and the land.Overviews of the state's history are given in Lewis Collins, Collins' Historical Sketches of Kentucky, rev. and enlarged by Richard H. Collins, 2 vol. (1874, reissued 1979), still valuable; Thomas D. Clark, A History of Kentucky, rev. ed. (1960), and Kentucky: Land of Contrast (1968); and Steven A. Channing, Kentucky: A Bicentennial History (1977). Specific periods are examined in Allan W. Eckert, The Frontiersmen: A Narrative (1967), an account of life on the frontier with much history of early Kentucky; George Morgan Chinn, Kentucky Settlement and Statehood, 17501800 (1975); and Hambleton Tapp and James C. Klotter, Kentucky: Decades of Discord, 18651900 (1977). Scholarly articles on Kentucky history may be found in The Filson Club History Quarterly. Wilford A. Bladen The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica