LEXINGTON-FAYETTE

city and urban county, coextensive with Fayette county, north-central Kentucky, U.S., the focus of the Bluegrass region and a major centre for horse breeding. Named in 1775 for the Battle of Lexington, Mass., it was chartered by the Virginia legislature in 1782 and was the meeting place (1792) for the first session of the Kentucky legislature. Lexington in the early 1880s, boasting Transylvania College (1780; now University), street lights, a public subscription library, a theatre, and a musical society, called itself the Athens of the West. In 1817 it presented the first Beethoven symphony heard in the United States. Horse racing on the town common was prohibited in 1788, and the racecourse was rebuilt in another part of town. Devotion to fine horseflesh remains a local passion (flat racing at Keeneland; trotting at the Red Mile). The American Thoroughbred Breeders Association has its headquarters in Lexington. Surrounded by rich farmlands, the city is an important market for beef cattle, sheep, spring lambs, bluegrass seed, and loose-leaf tobacco. Its manufactures include bourbon whiskey, paper products, and electronic equipment. The University of Kentucky and Lexington Theological Seminary were founded there in 1865; there are also two business colleges. The U.S. Government Hospital for Narcotics Addicts and the Lexington-Blue Grass Army Depot Headquarters are in the city. John C. Breckinridge, who was vice president of the United States from 1857 to 1861, as well as the Confederate general John Hunt Morgan, the Todd family, and U.S. Senator Henry Clay, are buried in Lexington Cemetery. The homes of Clay, Morgan, and Mary Todd Lincoln are public shrines. The Headley Museum on the Old Frankfurt Pike displays bibelots executed in precious jewels. Lexington was incorporated as a city in 1832. In 1974 Lexington city and Fayette county merged, thus creating an urban county government. Pop. (1990) city, 225,366; Lexington-Fayette MSA, 348,428.