History of Louisville, Kentucky

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The history of Louisville, Kentucky spans nearly two-and-a-half centuries since its founding in the late 18th century. The geology of the Ohio River, with but a single series of rapids midway in its length from the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers to its union with the Mississippi, made it inevitable that a town would grow on the site. The town of Louisville, Kentucky was chartered there in 1780. From its early days on the frontier, it quickly grew to be a major trading and distribution center in the mid-19th century and an important industrial city in the early 20th. The city declined in the mid-20th century, but by the late 20th, it was revitalized as a culturally-focused mid-sized American city.

The area's geography and proximity to the Falls of the Ohio River attracted people from the earliest times. However, prior to arrival of Europeans, the region was depopulated from the Beaver Wars of the 17th century, and no permanent Native American settlements existed in the area. It was used as hunting grounds by northern Shawnee and southern Cherokee. By the late 18th century, as the Falls created a barrier to river travel, settlements by Europeans began to grow at this portage point. The earliest such settlements occurred during the latter stages of the American Revolutionary War by Virginian soldiers under George Rogers Clark, first at Corn Island in 1778, then Fort-on-Shore and Fort Nelson on the mainland. At that time a part of Kentucky County, Virginia, the town was chartered in 1780 and named Louisville in honor of King Louis XVI of France.

In 2003, the city of Louisville merged with Jefferson County to become Louisville-Jefferson Metro. As of the 2010 census, it is the largest city in the state of Kentucky, the largest on the Ohio River, and 28th largest city in the nation.

Important events occurring in the city include the second largest American exhibition to date (1883), which had the largest to-date installation of light bulbs by their recent inventor and then-former resident Thomas Edison, as well as the first free public library in the US to be staffed by and provide services exclusively for African Americans (1905).^[1][2] Medical advances include the 1999 first human hand transplant in the US^[3] and the first self-contained artificial heart transplant in 2001.^[4]

Other notable residents of the city have included boxing legend Muhammad Ali, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, newscaster Diane Sawyer, actors Victor Mature, Ned Beatty and Tom Cruise, actresses Sean Young and Jennifer Lawrence, singers Nicole Scherzinger and Bryson Tiller, rapper Jack Harlow, the Speed family (including U.S. Attorney General James Speed and Abraham Lincoln's close friend Joshua Fry Speed), the Bingham family, industrialist/politician James Guthrie, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and contemporary writers Hunter S. Thompson and Sue Grafton.