document resume - ericdocument resume ed 383 629 so 024 990 author ulack, richard, ed.; and others...

DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 383 629 SO 024 990

AUTHOR Ulack, Richard, Ed.; And OthersTITLE Lexington and Kentucky's Inner Bluegrass Region.

Pathways in Geography Series, Site Guide Title No.10.

INSTITUTION National Council for Geographic Education.REPORT NO ISBN-1-884136-02-8PUB DATE 94NOTE 83p.; For related documents in this series, see SO

024 988-991. Publication prepared for the AnnualMeeting of the National Council for GeographicEducation (78th, Lexington, KY, November 2-5,1994).

AVAILABLE FROM National Council for Geographic Education, 16ALeonard Hall, Indiana University-of Pennsylvania,Indiana, PA 15705 ($9.50).

PUB TYPE Guides Classroom Use Teaching Guides (ForTeacher) (052) Speeches/Conference Papers (150)

EDRS PRICE MF01/11C04 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS Area Studies; Cultural Traits; *Geographic Concepts;

*Geographic Regions; *Geography; GeographyInstruction; Higher Education; *Human Geography;Physical Geography; Regional Characteristics;Secondary Education

IDENTIFIERS *Kentucky (Bluegrass Region); *Kentucky(Lexington)

ABSTRACT

This meeting site guide for Lexington, Kentucky andthe Bluegrass region around Lexington illustrates why the state ofKentucky and this region are excellent examples of how geographyplays out on the land, how regions emerge, and how human events andprocesses, in the context of the physical environment, lead todifferentiation and distinction, and long-term boundary maintenance.This guide also shows how and why the Inner Bluegrass' centrallocation and ex 'lent situation, in both Kentucky and the easternUnited States, have recently become key reasons for businesses andservices to locate in the region. The introduction (Richard Ulack)focuses on: (1) "Early Settlement of the Inner Bluegrass"; (2) "Fromthe 1790s to Today"; and (3) "Inner Bluegrass Attractions." Chapter 1

titled "Creating the Bluegrass Environment" (John F. Watkins and GaryO'Dell) describes Kentucky's physical regions. Chapter 2. "CreatingPlaces and Regions," includes the following: (1) "The Countryside"(Karl B. Reitz); (2) "The Region's Towns and Cities" (Richard Ulack);(3) "The Population of the Inner Bluegrass" (Richard Ulack); (4)"Bluegrass Culture" (Karl B. Reitz); and (5) "Lexington" (RichardSchein). Chapter 3, "Interactions and Connections," has thefollowing: (1) "Lexington as Center for Transportation,Communications, and Information" (Stanley D. Brunn); (2) "ModernLexington as Regional Center" (Richard Schein); (3) "Horse Breedingand Racing" (Karl B. Reitz); and (4) "Automobiles and the JapaneseConnection: Toyota in Kentucky" (Susan Roberts). Chapter 4, "LearningActivities" (Nijel Clayton; Kate Greer Fischer), contains thefollowing: (1) "Kentucky's Physical Landscapes"; (2) "Tobacco: Kingor Curse?" (3) "Studying Land Use through City Directories"; (4)

"Black Settlement Patterns in the Bluegrass"; (5) "The Horse Industry

in Kentucky"; and (6) "On the Road Again...." Maps, tables, andfigures accompany the text." Contains 22 references. (EH)

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Lexington andKentucky's InnerBluegrass Region

Richard Ulack, Karl B. Raitz, andHilary Lambert Hopper, Editors

Prepared for the 78th annual meeting of theNational Council for Geographic EducationLexington, KentuckyNovember 2-5, 1994

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Titles in the PATHWAYS IN GEOGRAPHY Series

1. Gersmehl, Philip J. 1991. The Language of Maps.

2. Andrews, Sona Karentz, Amy Otis-Wilborn, and Trinka Messenheimer-Young. 1991.Beyond Seeing and Hearing: Teaching Geography to Sensory Impaired ChildrenAn Integrated Based Curriculum Approach.

3. Waterstone, Marvin. 1992. Water in the Global Environment.

4. Martinson, Tom L. and Susan R. Brooker-Gross, eds. 1992. Revisiting the Americas: Teaching and Learning theGeography of the Western Hemisphere.

5. LeVasseur, Michal. 1993. Finding A Way: Encouraging Underrepresented Groups in Geography An AnnotatedBibliography. A PATHWAYS Resource Publication

6. Ennals, Peter. 1993. The Canadian Maritimes: Images and Encounters.

7. Slater, Frances. 1993. Learning Through Geography.

8. Baumann, Paul R. 1994. Up Close From Afar: Using Remote Sensing to Teach the American Landscape.

9. Benhart, John E. and Alex Margin. 1994. Wetlands: Science, Politics, and Geographical Relationships.

10. Ulack, Richard, Karl B. Raitz, and Hilary Lambert Hopper, eds. 1994. Lexington and Kentucky'sInner Bluegrass Region.

Special Publications Advisory BoardSalvatore J. Natoli, Editor of Special Publications, Washington, DC

Janice Monk, University of Arizona

John E. Benhart, Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania

Carolyn Prorok, Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania

National Council for Geographic Education Officers 1994M. Duane Nellis, President, Kansas State University

Douglas A. Phillips, Past President, Anchorage School District, Alaska

Edward A. Fernald, Vice President, Curriculum and Instruction, Florida State University

James Marran, Vice President, Curriculum and Instruction, Wilmette, Illinois

Donald Zeigler, Vice President, Research and External Relations, Old Dominion University, Virginia

Martha B. Sharma, Vice President, Publications and Products, National Cathedral School, Washington, DC

James F. Peters._ n, Vice l'resident, Finance, Southwest Texas State University

Sandra Pritchard, Recording Secretary, West Chester University, Pennsylvania

Ruth I. Shirey, Executive Director, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

National Council for Geographic Education16A Leonard Hall

Indiana University of PennsylvaniaIndiana, Per.nsylvania 15705

01994

A PATHWAYS IN GEOGRAPHYSite Guide

The National Council forGeographic Education

THE PATHWAYS IN GEOGRAPHY series hasbeen created by the Special PublicationsAdvisory Board of the National Council forGeographic Education to support the teachingand learning of themes, concepts, and skills ingeography at all levels of instruction.

Lexington andKentucky's InnerBluegrass Region

Richard Ulack, Karl B. Raitz, andHilary Lambert Hopper, Editors

Prepared for the 78th annual meeting of theNational Council for Geographic EducationLexington, KentuckyNovember 2-5, 1994

PATHWAYS IN GEOGRAPHY Series Title No. 10

Lexington and Kentucky's Inner Bluegrass RegionSite Guide prepared for the 78th annual meeting of the National Council forGeographic Education, Lexington, Kentucky, November 2-5, 1994

Richard Ulack, Karl B. Raitz and Hilary Lambert Hopper, EditorsRichard Gilbreath and Gyula Pauer, CartographersUniversity of Kentucky Cartography Laboratory

Copyright ©1994 by the National Council for Geographic Education.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informationstorage and retrieval system, without written permission from the piblisher.Materials may be copied by educators for classroom use only without obtaining permission.

For information about this title or about the series:National Council for Geographic Education16A Leonard Hall, Indiana University of PennsylvaniaIndiana, PA 15705

ISBN 1-884136-u2-8

Printed in the United States of America.

0

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION 1

Richard UlackEarly Settlement of the Inner Bluegrass 3

From the 1790s to Today 3

Inner Bluegrass Attractions 3

1. CREATING THE BLUEGRASS ENVIRONMENT 5

Kentucky's Physical Regions and the Inner Bluegrass S

John F. Watkins and Gary O'DellGeologic and Geomorphic Character of the Bluegrass 5

Bluegrass Weather and Climate 7Inner Bluegrass Karst Landscapes 9Environmental Issues 10

2. CREATING PLACES AND REGIONS 12

The Countryside 12

Karl B. RaitzCountry Roads and County Seats 12

Inner Bluegrass Farms 14The Region's Towns and Cities 16Richard Ulack

Early City Growth 16

Lexington's Development 16

Emergence of Other Towns and Cities 18The Population of the Inner Bluegrass 20Richard Ulack

Suburbanization Led the Changes 20

Jobs, Education, and Growth 21

Bluegrass Culture 23Karl B. Raitz

The Common People Arrive 23Links to the Outside 24Two Centuries of Juxtapositions 24

Lexington 25

Richard ScheinShowing Great Promise, Early 25

Into the Twentieth Century 27Lexington as Unique Yet Typical 29

6

Lexington and Kentucky's Inner Bluegrass Region

3. INTERACTIONS AND CONNECTIONS 31Lexington as Center for Transportation, Communications, and Information 31Stanley D. Brunn

Transportation 31Communications 33Information 34Lexington's Role in the Future 36

Modern Lexington as Regional Center 36Richard Schein

Nineteenth Century Brings a New Role 36All Roads Still Lead to Lexington 37Symbolic Heart of the Bluegrass and Beyond 38

Horse Breeding and Racing 39Karl B. Raitz

The Obvious Geographical Question 39After Historic Precedent, Environmental Circumstance 40Other Geographical Factorsand Good Genes 41A Happy Coalescence 41

Automobiles and the Japanese Connection; Toyota in Kentucky 42Susan Roberts

Japanese Cars in the U.S.: Why and Where 42Kentucky as an "Activist State" 44The Regional Impact 45A Kentucky Window on the Global Economy 45

4. LEARNING ACTIVITIES 47Nijel Clayton and Kate Greer Fischer

Kentucky's Physical Landscapes 48Tobacco: King or Curse? 53Studying Land Use through City Directories 56Black Settlement Patterns in the Bluegrass 58The Horse Industry in Kentucky 61On the Road Again 64

Further Readings and References Cited 68

iv


ILLUSTRATIONSFigures

1. Kentucky's Physical Regions and the Inner Bluegrass 2

2. Physiographic Diagram of Kentucky and the Bluegrass Region 6

3. Climography: Lexington 8

4. Major Highways in Kentucky and the Inner Bluegrass 13

5. Population Growth of Inner BluegrassCities and Towns: 1970, 1980, and 1990 19

6. Kentucky Population Growth, 1970-1990 (%) 21

7. Downtown Lexington 26

8. Lexington's Urban Growth, 1940-1990 28

9. Central and Eastern Kentucky's Historic Routes 32

10. Japanese Automobile Factories in the United States 43

11. Toyota's Kentucky Suppliers, 1993 46

Other Figures (unnumbered): Kentucky outline maps for class useDrainage 50Physiographic regions (with names) 51

Physiographic regions (without names) 52

Counties (with names) 66

Counties (without names) 67

Tables

1. The Inner Bluegrass: Population ofCities and Towns: 1870, 1910, 1950, and 1990 17

2. Population, 1990 and Percent Population Growth, 1950-1970 and1970-1990, Inner Bluegrass Counties and Kentucky 20

3. Non-Agricultural Employment by Type of Industry, 1991 22

4. Burley Tobacco - County Estimates, 1990 55

8

This annual meeting site guide is the secondannual meeting site guide in the PATHWAYS IN

GEOGRAPHY series. It illustrates why the stateof Kentucky and its Bluegrass region are ex-cellent examples of how geography plays outon the land, how regions emerge, and howhuman events and processes, in the context ofthe physical environment, lead to differentia-tion and distinction, and long-term boundarymaintenance. This guide also shows how andwhy the Inner Bluegrass' central location andexcellent situation, in both Kentucky and theeastern United States, have recently becomekey reasons for businesses and services to lo-cate in the region.

Of Kentucky's six major physical regions(Fig. 1), the best-known is the BluegrassRegion. A place name that is recognizable tooutsiders far and wide, the Bluegrass conjuresimages of grassy rolling hills, thoroughbredhorses, and beautiful farms. On the region'sphosphatic Ordovician limestones havedeveloped some of the most fertile soils in theworld. Sinkholes dot the gently rolling sur-face, many streams run underground, and thearea is laced with caves; together, these fea-tures constitute one of the best American ex-amples of karst topography. In addition tohorses and cattle, the area's farms alsoproduce burley tobacco and corn and, in thepast, hemp. Lexington, at the heart of theBluegrass, is the world's largest market forburley tobacco and in the late fall and winterthere is a prevalent aroma of tobacco beingprocessed in the city's warehouses. TheBluegrass is also noted for its bourbon whis-

INTRODUCTIONRichard Ulack

key, produced in a number of counties, someof which are still dry (where it is illegal to sellalcoholic beverages).

The Bluegrass region is encireed on thenorth by the Ohio River and on the east,south, and west by the Knobs region. TheBluegrass includes three topographic sub-regions called the Outer Bluegra3, the EdenShale Hills, and the Inner Bluegrass. Thestate's three major metropolitan areasLouis-ville, the northern Kentucky cities adjacent toCincinnati (Covington, Newport, andFlorence, among other, smaller places), andLexingtonstand at the apexes of what iscalled the Golden Triangle, an area that com-prises the majority of the state's populationand most of its industrial and commercial ac-tivity.

Our concern here is with the InnerBluegrass subregion, an area that includes allor parts of eleven counties: Anderson, Bour-bon, Boyle, Clark, Fayette, Franklin, Harrison,Jessamine, Mercer, Scott, and Woodford (Fig.1). The population of these eleven countiesnumbered more than 465,000 in 1990, account-ing for 12.5 percent of Kentucky's populationof 3.7 million. Lexington is the largest InnerBluegrass city; also within the eleven-countysubregion is the state capital, Frankfort, andthe county seats of Lawrenceburg (AndersonCo.), Paris (Bourbon), Danville (Boyle),Winchester (Clark), Cynthiana (Harrison),Nicholasville (Jessamine), Harrodsburg (Mer-

cer), Georgetown (Scott), and Versailles

(Woodford).


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Figum 1: Kentucky's Physical Regions and the Inner Bluegrass

state capital

0 county seat

0 town

Kentucky's Inner Bluegrass

SOURCE: Kentucky Land Use Suitability MapUK Agricultural Experiment Station, 1933

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Scale

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SOURCE: adapted from The Geological Seery of Kenrucks Preston McGratn. 1963

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Early Settlement of the Inner BluegrassThe region, first settled by white hunters, trap-pers, and adventurers during the 1770s, be-came and has remained one of the state's mostproductive agricultural regions based on itsfertile soils and abundant precipitation (about45" annually). Another group of settlers beganarriving during the late 1700s and these in-cluded wealthy, planters from the Virginia andCarolina Piedmont who brought with themtheir slaves, the region's first African-At lericans. Perhaps the best-known earlywhite settler was Daniel Boone, although hewas not among the first to enter the region.Farmers soon produced livestock and avariety of crops, including tobacco, corn, hay,and hemp, in sufficient quantity to market toNew Orleans and east coast cities. The live-stock raising tradition has been maintained;today cattle and horses are the second andthird leading (legal) agricultural commoditiesin the state, after tobacco.

From the 1790s to TodayNamed after the site of the Revolutionary Warbattle in Massachusetts, Lhe settlement's firstpermanent residents arrived in 1779 and in1782 Lexington was incorporated as a town.Growing rapidly, by the early nineteenth cen-tury it was one of the largest and most cul-tured places west of the Alleghenies and wasknown as the "Athens of the West." Indeed,the oldest college west of the Alleghenies (andthe sixteenth oldest in the U.S.), Transylvania,was established in 1780; the first classes inLexington were held in 1789. Today, Lexing-ton remains a center of learning. In addition toTransylvania University, the University ofKentucky is in Lexington. Founded as a land-grant institution in 1865, it is theCommonwealth's premier research institu-tion.

During the nineteenth century, the rivertowns of Cincinnati and Louisville gainedrapidly in size and economic importance andLexington lost some of its luster; but today thecity is the state's second largest with a mergedLexington-Fayette County Urban Government

serving a population of more than 225,000(Lexington is also the central city for the six-county Metropolitan Statistical Area, or MSA,that had a population of nearly 350,000 in1990). In addition to its universities and stategovernment, major employers in the immedi-ate region include the Toyota Motor Manufac-turing (TMM) plant that manufactures Camryautomobiles in Georgetown, Fruit of the Loom(underwear) in Frankfort, Rand McNally(map and book publishing) in Versailles, andLexmark (laptop computers, keyboards, andprinters), Square D (electrical equipment),Trane (air conditioning and heating), andProcter and Gamble (peanut butter) in Lexing-ton. As the urban center that serves much ofcentral and eastern Kentucky, Lexington alsoboasts a large number of health professionalsand health facilities, and other service sectorbusinesses.

Inner Bluegrass AttractionsWithin the city are a number of historic attrac-tions, including Ashland, the home of Lexing-ton's most famous citizen, Henry Clay(although a few might say the c,ty's mostfamous citizen was Adolph Rupp, the formerUniversity of Kentucky basketball coach!). Atone time a country estate and farm wherethoroughbreds grazed, Ashland (rebuilt by hisson James after Clay's death in 1852) andabout three acres are today preserved as a Na-tional Historic Landmark. Other historicplaces (and all within easy walking distance ofthe Hyatt Regency) include the Mary ToddLincoln House (wife of President Lincoln, shewas born in Lexington in 1818), the Hunt-Morgan House, the Lexington Opera House,and historic neighborhoods including GratzPark and South Hill.

The Inner Bluegrass region is perhaps bestknown for its horse-related attractions includ-ing some 200 thoroughbred and standard bredhorse farms that cluster around Lexington.Just a few years ago, a number of these horsefarms were open to the public but for a varietyof reasons (including fires that were acciden-tally set by visitors) most of the farms are no

3


longer open although special arrangementscan be made to visit some farms. Two racetracks, Keene land and the Red Mile, are lo-cated in the city. Well worth a visit, the Ken-tucky Horse Park between Lexington andGeorgetown along 1-75, provides much infor-mation and history on all aspects of the horseindustry and includes films, a museum, and aworking farm tour.

Many other Inner Bluegrass sites merit at-tention, including Daniel Boone's grave andthe spectacular state capitol in Frankfort; the

Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill, a wonderfully-restored Shaker community that includestwenty-seven buildings and numerous craft-making exhibits; a variety of bourbon distill-eries including Wild Turkey, Maker's Mark,Ancient Age, and Old Taylor; Harrodsburg,Kentucky's first permanent white settlement(founded by James Harrod and others in1774); and Fort Boonesborough, Kentucky'ssecond settlement (founded by Daniel Booneand others in 1775). Both Harrodsburg andFort Boonesborough have historic reconstruc-tions of the original forts on exhibit.

4

CREATING THE BLUEGRASSENVIRONMENT

Kentucky's PhysicalRegions and the InnerBluegrassJohn F. Watkins and Gary O'Dell

Kentucky's physical geography is diverse.Within its boundaries one may find forestedmountains of the Appalachian Plateau, rockygorges and tumbling waterfalls, broad valleysframing several major rivers, and ferti'e plainsthat support an array of agricultural activities.Kentucky's weather is equally diverse. Thesummer heat may bring temperatures above1001, whereas winter lows often reach belowzero. Thunderstorms result in torrential rain,hail, and tornadoes, and winter ice storms anddeep snow are not uncommon. Yet the climateis generally mild, with fewer than 86 days outof the year having any form of precipitation,and for much of the year the skies are fairlyclear. All of these characteristics have longworked in concert first to attract, and sub-sequently support, both people and com-merce. Gilbert Imlay, an early traveler to thearea, wrote in 1792, "Everything here assumesa dignity and splendor I have never seen inany other part of the world." Residents andvisitors from that time forward have shared asimilar sentiment.

North-central Kentucky serves as a perfecthome base for exploring the state's manyphysical features; this guide will focus

primarily on the Bluegrass Region, near thecenter of which is Lexingtun. We begin withan overview of Kentucky's geologic origins,fundamental to the existence of myriad sur-face and subsurface features. Next is a surveyof the karst landscapes of the Inner Bluegrass,and we end with a glimpse of a few environ-mental issues that emerge from the area'sunique physical geography.

Geologic am! Geomorphic Character of theBluegrassThe history of Kentucky's landscapes and un-derlying bedrock dates back well over half abillion years. During the early Paleozoic Era,Kentucky, and most of the southeasternUnited States, was covered by ocean. As aconsequence, a variety of lime oozes, shellfragments, muds, and sands accumulatedacross the area, all of which eventuallysolidified into the respective limestones,mudstones, shales, and sandstones foundtoday. The variations in rock types most oftenreflect periodic changes in sea level, which in-fluenced both the sediment particle size (suchas silts, sands, and gravels) and the extent ofchemical precipitates (such as the calcium car-bonate of limestone) that were deposited.Within many of these rocks can be found ahost of fossilized marine life, and the Falls ofthe Ohio (located at Louisville but accessiblefrom Indiana) is well known because of its ex-posed coral reef lirnestone and abundantfossilsdating back to the Devonian andSilurian periods (400 to 430 million years ago).

Also important in Kentucky's geologicpast are sea level changes that resulted in the

5

13


emergence of land surfaces. During suchperiods (primarily about 335 years ago duringthe Pennsylvanian Period), land-dwellinganimals and plants thrived. Several wetlandareas accumulated organic matter with thewarm humid climates of the time, and laterrises in sea level covered this material withfine sediments that effectively stopped decom-position. Today we see the geologic results ofthis Sequential exposure and inundation in thecoal fields of eastern and western Kentucky.

The Bluegrass Region comprises the north-central portion of the state, formed throughthe processes of broad warping and erosion.During the middle Paleozoic era (ap-proximately 415 million years ago during CieSilurian age) the pressures of crustal move-

limestones

shales

ment caused a major uplift extending fromwhat is now Cincinnati southwest towardsNashville, Tennessee. This uplift, called theCincinnati Arch, temporarily divided themajor eastern and western geologic basinswith respect to marine and terrestrial deposits.Warping continued for approximately another15 million years, and because this arch was ex-posed to atmospheric forces, upland stratawere the first to be broken down through theprocesses of weathering. Today, the upper-most sandstone layers have locally beeneroded to reveal much older shales and lime-stones that characterize the region's bedrock,exposed along roadcuts and stream valleys(Fig. 2). Continued lowering of sea level andcontinental uplift eventually exposed the en-tire state, and the processes of weathering,

Figure 2: Physiographic Diagram of Kentucky and the Bluegrass RegionAREA OF DETAIL

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SOURCE: John Watkins, University of Kentucky, 1994

SOURCE: The Geological Story of Kentucky, by Preston McGrain, 1983

6

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especially stream erosion, then became majorplayers shaping the landscape statewide.

Three distinct areas comprise theBluegrass Region: the Outer Bluegrass, theInner Bluegrass, and the Eden Shale Hills.These areas become quite apparent whendriving in virtually any direction away fromLexington, which stands in the approximatecenter of the Inner Bluegrass. The gently roll-ing landscape immediately surrounding Lex-ington is based on Middle OrdovicianLimestones, which are among the oldest rocksfound in the state. These limestones happen tohave relatively high levels of phosphorus, andthe soils that have developed in the area tendto be deep and quite fertile. Consequently,agriculture here has been very successful. Sotoo has the horse industry, which relies on thesupplemental nutrition provided by grassesgrown in local soils.

'Traveling west or south away from Lex-ington one soon encounters the KentuckyRiver, which crosses the Inner Bluegrass andhas carved a deep ineandering valley. Theriver can be seen in many places, includingU.S. Highways 25, 27, 62, and 68, and ClaysFerry (accessible off Interstate 75 south of Lex-ington). The river has entrenched itself 300 to400 feet below the level of the central Ken-tucky limestone plain and the resulting valleypalisades are quite dramatic.

Beyond the river there is an evident in-crease in elevation that marks the Eden ShaleHills, which is a transition to the OuterBluegrass area. The rocks of this area are, likethose in the Inner Bluegrass, also Ordovicianin age, but are somewhat younger and quitedifferent in lithology. Comprised of thinlybedded shales and limestones, these rocks areless resistant to erosion. This means that theEden Shale rocks have been eroded into hillsand steep slopes, and soils are infertile yel-lowish clays. Although the shale area wascleared and farmed as recently as the 1930s,most slope land has reverted to woodland andthe few remaining farms raise tobacco or pas-

hire stock on narrow valley bottom fields. Far-ther west and south (or east) the shale givesway to younger Ordovician limestones and agently rolling plain with fertile reddish soils.This is the Outer Bluegrass. Although farmingin the Outer Bluegrass is not as profitable as itis in the Inner Bluegrass, significant amountsof tobacco, corn, grains, cattle, hogs, and dairyproducts are produced.

Moving west, south, or east, one can im-mediately identify the outermost boundary ofthe Bluegrass by the presence of the Knobs, anirregular belt of relatively isolated tree-covered conical hills. The knobs are remnantsof the retreating Pottsville Escarpment on theeast and south, and Muldraugh's Hill on thewest. They are capped by highly resistant con-glomerate or limestone that protects themfrom erosion. They can be viewed at CaveRun Lake (south of Interstate 64 nearMorehead), just east of Berea, or south andwest of Louisville. The southern Knobs areespecially rich in geodes. Beyond the Knobsstand limestone and conglomerate-capped es-carpments that mark the transition into thestate's dissected plateau regions.

Bluegrass Weather and ClimateFrom a geologic perspective, centralKentucky's climate has demonstrated the ex-tremes from being nearly tropical in nature (asduring the Pennsylvanian Epoch when coaldeposits formed) to being almost subpolarduring the Pleistocene Epoch that brought Il-linois- and Wisconsin-age glaciers as far southas the Ohio River. Such variations in tempera-ture and precipitation had tremendous effectson Kentucky's physical landscape. Today,however, such variation is only found withina single year, and monthly averages yield aclimate that is best described as Mild Mid-latitude (or Humid Subtropical---Cfa--accord-ing to the Koppen-Geiger system). Within asingle year, temperatures can normally rangefrom a winter monthly low of about 31'F to asummer high of 76'F, and precipitation tendsto amount to at least two inches per month,with a slight summer peak and an annual total

7


of just over 44 inches (Fig. 3). Overall there isan annual moisture surplus in the Bluegrass,and only the exposed limestone bedrockprevents local soils from becoming acidic, acharacteristic of most mid-latitude soils.

Like other mild mid-latitude climates, theBluegrass experiences a diversity of weather.With a location of about 38° north of theequator, the Bluegrass is positioned in a vir-tual battleground of contrasting air masses.During the summer months warm, moist airmasses move north from the Gulf of Mexicoand dominate the region, whereas wintermonths experience the influence of cool, dryair masses from the north. An important factis tha; each of these air masses usually tendsto be moderated by the time they approachKentucky and temperatures are commonlywarmnot hot, or coolnot cold. As a conse-quence, the normal weather of the Bluegrass isquite comfortable. Yet winter or summer ex-

38°02' N 84°30' W

tremes occur and often produce frozen waterpipes or high air conditioning bills.

An important feature of an eastern con-tinental mid-latitude location such as theBluegrass is that relatively smaii changes inthe atmosphere can cause dramatic changes inlocal weather. Slightly stronger contrasts in airmasses, for example, may result in severestorms along cyclonic fronts, and numerousice storms and tornado outbreaks during thetransition months between winter and sum-mer attest to this influence. Indeed, close ob-servation of Lexington trees will clearly showthe effects of the early spring ice storms of1994, during which nearly 15,000 Lexingtonhouseholds were left without power for threedays. Slight changes in upper atmosphere jetstream location can also cause extremes intemperature; the record low temperature is-21"F (recorded in January of 1963) when anArctic air mass reached the Bluegrass during

Figure 3: Climograph for Lexington, KY

Elevation: 970 feet

22

20

18 -

16

14-

12-

10-

8-

6-

4-

2-

C

Avg monthly maximum temr

Jan Feb Mar

Avg. monthly minimum temp.

Average Annual Temperature = 55.1° FAverage Annual Precipitation = 44.5"

Apr May

IJun

ia

1Jul Aug Sep

Asa

90

80

70

60

-50

40

30

20

10

Oct Nov Dec

SOURCE: NOM, U.S. Dept. of Commerce

0

8

lb


an unusual southerly track of the polar jet.Monthly highs broke records during June andJuly of 1988 when the polar jet was far to thenorth and a high pressure cell brought 100+`Ftemperatures and drought conditions to theregion.

Inner Bluegrass Karst LandscapesWeather and climate characteristics acrossmillennia have caused dramatic alteration ofthe Bluegrass landscape. Perhaps the mostvisible alterations, within the Inner Bluegrassat least, has been the development of a distinctkarst topography. Surface features associatedwith karst landscapes are principally at-tributed to solution weathering of calcium-based rocks such as limestone. For thesefeatures to have developed, precipitation andgroundwater must be slightly acidic in orderto react withand break downlimestone.This acidity is attained first as rainfall absorbsatmospheric carbon dioxide, and second asmoisture absorbs carbon dioxide concentratedin the open spaces of soils. The absorption ofthis gas by water results in a weak carbonicacid, which readily decomposes limestone.

Approximately fifty percent of Kentuckyhas limestone or dolomite at, or very near, thesurface, and virtually all of the InnerBluegrass has this type of bedrock. Limestoneis not permeable to water, yet tends to haveboth horizontal weaknesses (bedding planes)and vertical openings (fissures and faults)through which water passes. Over time thesepathways become enlarged by chemical dis-solution, which, in turn, allows increasingwater flow. The limestone becomes a vastplumbing system of tubes and conduits thatcarries water under the influence of gravity tolower elevations.

Surface streams in karst regions, includingthe Bluegrass, are often limited in extent oreven absent. The water that would normallybe carried by surface streams instead flowsunderground, out of sight and often out ofreach. Only major streams flow across the sur-

face and many, like the Kentucky River, arefed more by underground sources than sur-face tributaries. A number of surface streamnetworks disappear within a short distance, aswater either gradually drains into bedrock fis-sures within the streambed or disappears al-together into swallets and sinkholes that leaddirectly to deeper bedrock conduits.

The notion of caves as features resultingfrom solution processes is a concept of humanperception, defined in terms of human bodydimensions. As water in the karst landscapeflows through conduits of all sizes from nar-row cracks to passages tens-of-feet high andwide, the proportion of these conduits that wecall caves are simply those large enough forhumans to walk, crawl, or painfully squirminto. Most conduits are far too small to permithuman entry and so we do not perceive themas caves. Nevertheless, they are the most im-portant drainage mechanism in karstlandscapes. Underground drainage ultimatelyemerges as springs at the level of the nearestsurface stream that is large and deep enoughto avoid underground capture. This is knownas local base level. The regional base level forgroundwater in the Inner Bluegrass is theKentucky River, trenched in its steep-sidedgorge nearly four hundred feet below Lexing-ton's elevation.

Grouna wa ter emerges as springs alongthe banks of Kentucky River tributaries suchas North and South Elkhorn Creeks, HickmanCreek, Jessamine Creek, and other streams.The region's first explorers and settlers wereimpressed by the number of free-flowingsprings that watered the countryside. Many ofthe larger springs became landmarks andwere used to navigate through the sparsely-settled frontier wilderness. Since settlerswould make their living by agriculture, agood water supply was of paramount impor-tance for livestock, crops, and domestic use.Springs were thought to provide the veryfinest sort of water, and land claims wereoften based around a good spring.

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A farm's residence was usually built nearthe best spring for easy access. Protectiveenclosures, or spring houses, could be verysimple or as elaborate as the owner's taste andbudget permitted. One spring house inresidential Lexington in the early nineteenthcentury was a two-story structure of brick, 10by 20 feet; the upper story was used as asmokehouse. The rural Bluegrass region todayis dotted with hundreds of stone springhouses, now primarily used for wateringstock.

Community site selection in the InnerBluegrass was often influenced strongly bythe presence of a large spring. Inner Bluegrasscommunities founded in the 1770s at springlocations include Lexington, Georgetown, andHarrodsburg. Although most cities and townsin the state are today served by municipalwater supplies derived from surface water, afew are still dependent upon the same springthat marked their original site.

Karst features have also played aneconomic role in the region's history. Duringthe War of 1812, Lexington became the marketcenter for saltpeter mined from caves and rockshelters in the Mississippian limestone beltand this became the bases for local gunpow-der manufacturing. A number of early in-dustries used springs, either forwater-powered mills or as a source of water.The best-known example of a spring-depend-ent, early Kentucky industry is bourbon whis-key distillation. The first bourbon whiskeymade in the state was reported to be thatmade in 1789 by Craig and Parker atGeorgetown's Royal Spring.

Today, with increased citizen concernabout the purity of drinking water, nationalsales of bottled water have dramatically in-creased. The image of pure spring water (aswe shall later see, an image far from the truth)has supported a growing number of bottlingcompanies in this country and abroad, includ-ing one in the Inner Bluegrass south of Lex-ington. The water they distribute is pure, but

has been reconstituted and is natural only in ageneral sense.

The Central Kentucky karst is identifiedby place names. Many towns have a SpringStreet. Lexington has its own Spring Street, aswell as Russell Cave Road, Cave Hifi Lane,Boiling Springs Drive, Cave Creek, DeepSprings Subdivision, the Springs Motel, andother similar names. In the countryside aretwo Cave Spring Farms and one Cave landRegional Farm.

Environmental IssuesHistorically, builders and city planners havegiven little attention to the special problems ofdevelopment on karst landscapes. Lexingtonis sited atop a fairly well-developed karst ter-rain. Over two centuries of city growth manykarst features have been indiscriminatelycovered up during construction or used as in-lets for storm drainage disposal. These andother practices have produced variousproblems including surface and groundwaterpollution, building foundation instability, andlocalized flooding.

Groundwater in conduit flow systemstends to move rapidly close to the surface, al-most at surface rates, and to undergo little fil-tering effect during its passage underground.Introduced contaminants can end up ten miles(16.1 km) away in a day, with little reductionin impurities. During the nineteenth century,ignorance of the relationship between con-taminated water and disease led to severalcholera epidemics. At present we considerourselves less at risk to water-borne diseasesbecause of modern water treatment facilities,but a number of contaminants are difficult toremove. In addition, groundwater supplies 90percent of Kentucky's rural residents. Ob-viously, much is at stake in maintaininggroundwater quality.

Groundwater contamination in an urbanarea takes many forms. Fayette County, for ex-ample, receives mixed contaminants fromboth agricultural and urban sources. The

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usual form of pollutant entry intogroundwater is directly through sinkholesand stream bed swallets, and by soil infiltra-tion.

Sinkholes seem to invite abuse. People fillthem in to make the ground level. This is oftenaccomplished by dumping junk automobiles,dead animals, and trash and refuse of allkinds. On the grand scale, sinkholes have beenerased en masse by large subdivision develop-ments where the natural land form is alteredto conform to the design of developers. Yet,the sinkholes remain functional, regardless ofhow the surface has been rearranged. Overtime filled sinkholes often redevelop, at theexpense of whatever structures may besituated above. A building erected over a sinkthat has been artificially leveled may have aportion of its foundation resting in deeper soilthan other parts. The foundation will inevitab-ly settle unevenly and may crack and shift. Inkarst landscapes, the ground can collapse.Visualize a vertical shaft in the limestonebedrock, thirty feet deep and eight feet indiameter. Sitting on top of the shaft, hiding itfrom view, is a thick plug of clay and sod, likea cap on a milk jug. From the surface it looksjust like the rest of the land. After a heavyrain, the soil bridge may cave in, leaving agaping chasm. The city of Bowling Green inwestern Kentucky is plagued by such eventsforty or fifty times each year. In Lexington thisphenomenon is much less frequent. Somesinkhole collapses are natural. Others arebrought on by increased runoff, the result ofcovering the surface with asphalt or houses.

Grading the landscape to suit the needs ofa particular development may adversely affectarea drainage patterns. Sinkholes, especiallysinking streams, are often used as convenientinlets for storm drainage. They often haverunoff diverted to them far in excess of theirflow capacities. Flooding occurs as stormwater piles up faster than it can penetrate intothe aquifer. This has occurred in several Lex-

ington neighborhoods. Many people have un-knowingly bought homes in flood zones.

In 1985, Lexington enacted a Sinkhole Or-dinance, and as a result, land developmentmust take karst features into account.Sinkholes and adjacent land may be classifiedto exclude any surface development in theform of structures or even the filling in of lowareas. Most significant, sellers are required togive notice to a potential purchaser or lenderthat a particular property may be subject tofuture sinkhole problems.

Lexington, like many cities nationwide,demonstrates a high level of ccncern for en-vironmentally sound land use. This concern isespecially evident in zoning that requires cer-tain amounts of open space within the variousland use categories. Indeed, this zoningblends very well with the city's efforts toreduce the sinkhole problem. Within severalsubdivisions, for example, sinkhole areas areused as a common space for recreation orsimple enjoyment of their aesthetic qualities.

Solution processes and the resulting karstlandscapes of the Bluegrass provide a valu-able field laboratory for both students and in-structors of geography. Few places have sucha variety of active cave systems, sinkholes,and drainage features in such close proximityto a large urban area, and there is no questionthat Lexington represents an excellent casestudy of the interaction between humans andtheir physical environment. Caving is apopular past-time for a growing number ofcentral Kentucky residents, and a surprisingnumber of natives have grown up in andaround caves and have relied almost solely onsprings or wells for their water. Despite thebenefits, either for recreation or as a source ofwater, the Bluegrass karst landscape will con-tinue to cause problems that can be solvedonly through responsible action at both the in-dividual and community level.

11

2CREATING PLACES AND REGIONS

The CountrysideKarl B. Raitz

Spend an afternoon driving Inner Bluegrasscountry roads and will invariably come toseveral conclusions about how the rurallandscape is organized. Since the only townsof any size are county seats, the roads thatconnect one town with another are the radialroads that link county seats, roads named fortheir destinationsVersailles Road, Win-chester Road, Paris Pike (Fig. 4). Smaller roadscriss-cross the countryside in a loose web link-ing hamlets, old mill sites, and fords and fer-ries, and are likewise named for theirdestinationsLemons Mill Pike, HuffmanMill Pike, McCouns Ferry Road, Delaney'sFerry Road, Mondays Landing Road, OregonPike, Athens-Boonesboro Road. Central Ken-tucky counties are smallFayette County is285 square miles (738 sq km), Bourbon County292 (756 sq km)so the county seat townsstand only fifteen to twenty miles (24 to 32kilometers) apart. With some notable excep-tions, smaller settlements are often crossroadscollections of a grocery store and a fewhouses. The exceptions include about twentyAfrican-American hamlets, each with a dozenor more houses, a church, and perhaps agrocery store. Before the Civil War, ruralAfrican-American slaves lived in quarters, orsmall houses, on their owner's farms. Afterthe War, many freedmen moved to the largertowns, but for those who remained in thecountryside, finding a place to live and a job

was a major concern. Many farms continuedto produce hemp, a labor-intensive fiber crop,grains, and livestock, and needed farmlaborers. To house the freedmen so theywould be close enough to walk to work atnearby farms, developers and farmers soy:' ordonated land on which they built clusters ofsmall houses that they sold or gave to formerslaves. Many of these hamlets still survive,often in out-of-the-way places at the backsideof a farm or tucked into the curve of a creekbank. Some are named for the person whodeveloped the land, other names had religiousconnotationsJones Town, Jim Town, Mad-dox Town, Zion Hill, New Zion.

Because railroads arrived well after theInner Bluegrass was settled, railroad com-panies merely ran their track from one estab-lished town to another and were notconcerned, as they would be farther west,with building railroad towns as places forpeople to settle. The single exception to this isthe village of Midway, northwest of Lexing-ton. In 1835, the Lexington and Ohio Railroadplatted streets and lots for this village that laymidway between Lexington and Frankfort.The depot sat at one end of main street, orRailroad Street, and the track bisected thetown's center.

Country Roads and County SeatsCountry roads rarely run in straight lines, butrather conform either to the topography or ir-regular property boundaries. Becauseeighteenth-century Kentucky was part ofwestern Virginia, settlement followed Virginiatraditions, including the practice of surveying

12tier


Figure 4: Major Highways In Kentucky and the Inner Bluegrass

0state capital

county seat

town

0 10 20 milesI I

Scale

LEGENDNir.- Interstate Highway

ParkwayPrincipal Highwayor Connector RoadExit to AlternateHighway

o so loo mites

I I i

Scale

PADUCAH

HENDERSON

COVINGtON

1,0 SVI

-.in,4111:111Ft 14EFK

ai44,7,-7.1r

yrialp.t.4.141JLEARIST/ITDINN

--A,

41,

7..4\tscolvuNG'^ )71 ail

pus Amy ,SOURCE: Existing and Future Land Use Map, Bluegrass Area Development District. June 1993

21BEST COPY AVAILABLE

13


land according to metes and bounds rather thana systematic rectangular survey like thoseused in Georgia or east Texas, or the federalTownship and Range survey used across theMiddle West and West. Without a basic gridto follow, surveyors enclosed land into oddlyshaped and sized properties by boundarylines that connected corner markers. Boun-daries might follow roads or streams. Cornersmight be marked by prominent trees, rockoutcrops, piles of rock, or iron pins. The resultwas a crazy quilt of fields, rarely square orrectangular, today demarcated by rock orplank fences and country roads. Rock fencesbuilt by Irish immigrantsthe most activerock fence building period was the 1830sthrough the 1850sreplaced the split rail fen-ces erected by the first generation of settlers.

If county seats are the focus of countryroads, these towns are also the focus of ruralbusiness. In each oneCynthiana, Danville,Georgetown, Harrodsburg, Lawrenceburg,Lexington, Nicholasville, Paris, Versailles,Winchester, and Frankfort (also the state capi-tal)the courthouse stands on a centralsquare surrounded by business buildings. Inthe nineteenth century, circuit judges came totown at designated times and town merchantscounted on such court days and regular shop-ping trips for necessities to provide their busi-ness. But in most towns, these old commercialbuildings today are either empty or occupiedby non-traditional businesses, much like ahermit crab will inhabit a cast-off shell; aswhen a karate school offers martial training ina former women's clothing store, or a res-taurant serves pasta salad in the town's oldbank building. Until the mid-1960s, mostcounty seat business districts were still vital,still host to a full complement of traditionalbusinesses. Modern Main Street is no longerstable but, as elsewhere across the nation, isthreatened by automobile-oriented strips thatalign the main highways at the edge of town.Here Wal-Mart stores and other discountshopping centers stand amidst acres of park-ing lots, fast food restaurants, gas stations,and small plazas where several businesses

share a common building. Mayors and citycouncils fret about the status of their businessdistricts and engage experts to devise solu-tions. Harrodsburg and Winchester haveemployed federally funded main streetprograms to refurbish their downtown build-ings in an attempt to recapture business andintrigue tourists with a historic downtown.Midway's main street (called Railroad Street)is lined with antique shops, and Georgetownhas an antique mall. Despite such efforts, thecorner drug stores and hardware stores are,for the most part, gone, leaving the court-house attended by the sheriff's office and afew lawyers' offices, implying that the onlypeople who make the trip into town either arelocal people with legal business or touristsgaping at collectibles.

Inner Bluegrass FarmsInner Bluegrass farms are of two types:general farms that produce burley tobacco,feeder cattle, corn, pasture grasses, and as-sorted other products, and specialized farms.The specialty farms concentrate on one or twoproducts, especially dairy and horses. Burleytobacco is the state's leading cash crop, andthe Inner Bluegrass is a leading tobaccoproducing area although the crop is raised inalmost every county in the state. Nineteenth-century settlers brought dark, heavy varietiesof tobacco into Kentucky from Virginia,genetically related to tobaccos grown in theCaribbean. These tobaccos were manufacturedinto chewing plugs and cigars. In the 1860s, asouthern Ohio farmer discovered in his seedbed a mutated, lighter colored tobacco, andfrom those plants came the modern burleytobaccos that are milder and a major con-stituent of cigarettes. Tobacco production hasbeen controlled and supported by federal al-lotment programs since the 1930s. Most allot-ments were small, an acre or less, and wereintended to stabilize prices; but productioncontrols also had the effect of tying tobacco tospecific farms or individuals, in effect freezingthe geography of production by prohibitingexpansion into unplanted areas.

14

2`'


In the spring, farmers plant burley insterilized seed beds. The beds are coveredwith a thin white muslin cloth to keep outpests and weed seeds, and screen out harshsunlight. In May or June, a work crew willtransplant the seedlings into carefullyprepared fields. During the summer the croprequires weeding and spraying for pests anddiseases. Seed heads must be broken off asthey form. The well-tended crop matures bymid-August or September. Burley is har-vested, increasingly by migrant labor, bychopping off the entire stalk near the ground.The stalk is impaled on a four-foot stick withfour or five other plants, and hauled to a largebarn. Each tobacco stick is hung inside thebarn on an internal frame, and the sticks nearthe roof may be thirty feet or more above thefloor. The crop is then air cured; that is thefarmer will open tall, narrow doors along eachside in dry weather to allow air to circulateand gradually reduce the leaves' moisturecontent. In November, the crop is usuallyready for market. Farmers retrieve the sticksfrom the barn, repair to a small attached shedto strip the leaves from the stalks--placingeach leaf in an appropriate grade pileandthen bale the graded tobacco leaves together.After Thanksgiving, the tobacco auctionmarkets in Lexington and the county seattowns open and the roads are crowded withtobacco-laden trucks and trailers hauling thecrop to the warehouses. Tobacco leaves litterthe roadsides and streets near the warehouses.After the tobacco is auctioned, it requires fur-ther drying. This may take place in the winterand early spring months and fills the air withthe smell of cured tobacco. Tobacco auctionwarehouses are large, often with an acre(43,560 sq. ft.) or more of floor space. Those inLexington cluster along the main railroadarterials, South Broadway, Leestown Road,and Old Frankfort Pike. The Penn BrothersWarehouse was reputed to be the world'slargest until it was torn down a few years ago.Now a large food store, a fast food restaurant,and parking lot occupy the site.

Corn has traditionally been fed to live-stock and provided the raw material for awhiskey industry. The mash that bourbon ismade from must, by federal law, be at least 51percent corn. A century ago, most central Ken-tucky counties had distilleries. These havegradually consolidated and are now produc-tion centers in Louisville and Nelson Countyin the Outer Bluegrass. Large distilleriesremain in the Inner Bluegrass near Law-renceburg.

Specialized horse farms concentrate in anarc around Lexington, and spill into adjoiningcounties. Some farms are owned by wealthyindividuals from out of state who maintainbreeding and racing operations. Local peopleown other farms and they represent the thirdor fourth generations in the same business.They may concentrate on either breeding forsale, training, or racing. The horse farmlandscape has evolved into a highly refinedmilieu of parkland pastures, white or blackplank fences, large, colorful barns, and greatstylish houses. Although the farms occupy asmall portion of the Inner Bluegrass, a regionthat itself comprises only about 11 percent ofthe state's territory, the horse farms arepowerful tourist attractions and offer symbolsthat local communities and the state haveemployed to represent the state to the world.

At the edge of the Inner Bluegrass region,the countryside changes abruptly. The shaleand limestone Kope geologic formation sur-rounds the Inner Bluegrass limestones in arough ring commonly called the Eden ShaleHills (see Fig. 2). The shales break downquickly into yellow clays producing poor soilsand steep slopes. The Eden Shale was notcoveted by early Bluegrass settlers and whenfarmed in the nineteenth century proved aharsh place to make a living compared to thelush lands in the Inner Bluegrass. Today,second growth cedars and hardwoods coverthe shale hill slopes and modest farms stringout along the valley bottoms. These farmersmay commute to nearby towns for jobs thatsupplement farm income.

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The Region'sTowns and CitiesRichard Mack

At the center of an important crossroads loca-tion, Lexington was in its heyday the centralcity for the entire Bluegrass region. As early as1800 it was considered by many to be a mostimportant place with its many fine homes, es-tates, taverns and inns, and diverse businessesand manufacturing activities. By the early1800s, the Wilderness Road from the Cumber-land Gap, the Limestone Road from Maysville(formerly Limestone), Kentucky on the OhioRiver, and the Midland Trail that linked Ash-land and Louisville, all passed through or ter-minated in Lexington. With TransylvaniaCollege and other cultural and educational in-fluences, Lexington by 1820 could accuratelylay claim to being the "Athens of the West."There were other indicators of Lexington'searly significance. Wealthy estate ownersbrought and raised high quality livestock, in-cluding thoroughbred horses, and by 1828 thefirst horse-racing track was built in Lexington.The nation's second mental hospital, the East-ern Lunatic Asylum, was opened in the city in1824. By 1820, the city could still lay claim tobeing the largest place in Kentucky, twice aslarge as upstart Louisville. By the end of thedecade, however, Lexington had lost itsprimacy.

Early City GrowthEven Frankfort was larger than Louisville inthese early years. Because it outbid Lexington(it offered more land, material, and money forconstruction of the state house), the legislatureapproved Frankfort as the state capital in1792. (The debate over whether the state capi-tal should be located in Frankfort, Lexington,or Louisville lasted until 1904, when the statelegislature voted to allocate the revenueonemillion dollarsto construct a new capitolbuilding in Frankfort). The 1800 census-takers

counted 628 persons in Frankfort, thusmaking it the state's second largest town afterLexington. Frankfort also became an impor-tant transportation hub as steamboats traveledbetween Louisville and Frankfort, whichstands beside the Kentucky River, and aturnpike connected the capital with Louisvilleand Lexington, as well as with other, smallertowns of the area.

The importance of Lexington andFrankfort would soon diminish with the rapidgrowth of Louisville. The site at the Falls ofthe Ohio and the break in navigation that thisphysical feature caused, together with the in-vention of the steamboat, shifted the focus ofurban life in Kentucky seventy-five miles (121kilometers) to the west to Louisville. It tookhuman-powered keelboats and their cargothree or more months to make the tripupstream from New Orleans to Louisville; thesteamboat made the same trip in only oneweek. The first steamboat arrived at Louisvillein 1811 and by 1830 the city's populationnumbered over 10,000 citizens, which made itthe state's largest urban place. By 1830 Lexing-ton's population was just over 6,000, andFrankfort's was a mere 1,682.

Lexington's DevelopmentIn recent years, especially since the 1950s, Lex-ington's growth, in terms of population, in-dustry, and service activities, has been veryrapid; by 1970 the city was the fifteenthfastest-growing in the nation with a popula-tion of 108,000, or 72 percent more peoplethan it had in 1960. In 1990, the city's popula-tion was 207,000 (see Table 1). One reason forsuch rapid population growth is the new in-dustries and service activities that havecreated employment. These activities have lo-cated in Lexington in part because of the city'scentral location and the excellent Interstatehighway and road network that serves thearea; Interstates 75 and 64 and the BluegrassParkway all intersect near Lexington (see Fig.4). Lexington, since it is not located on a river,never had access to water transportation asdid Louisville or Frankfort. Furthermore,

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while railroads connected Lexington toFrankfort, Louisville, Ohio, and other placesbeginning in the mid-nineteenth century, theynever spurred the city's growth as was thecase in other cities. Thus it is the more recenthighway network that has made Lexington amore central place.

The 1950s witnessed the industrial growthof the city; in 1956 International BusinessMachines (IBM) opened an electric typewriterplant on the north side and soon a number ofother industries followed. IBM sold its opera-tion to IBM-affiliate Lexmark in 1991, whichmanufactures printers and laptop computers,but the region's industrial activities continueto grow. Most recently, the huge ToyotaMotor Manufacturing (TMM) plant wasopened near Georgetown in Scott Countywhere it builds its Camry automobiles; todayover 5,000 workers are employed at the plant.Service activities, however, remain Lexing-ton's most significant employment sector withover three-quarters of the city's workers soemployed. The city serves as the medical,legal, financial, cultural, and educational cen-ter for the Inner Bluegrass, as well as for east-ern Kentucky and other parts of the state. Thecity's largest employer, the University of Ken-tucky with some 10,000 faculty and staff, is the

major university for the entire state. Lexing-ton, even though its industrial work force hasincreased in size and share since the 1950s, canbe characterized as a white-collar city.

Surrounding Lexington in a hexagonalpattern are the other county seat towns of theInner Bluegrass: Georgetown, Paris, Win-chester, Nicholasville, Versailles, and Rich-mond (Fig. 4). Only the latter, in MadisonCounty, is not technically part of the InnerBluegrass. These county seats are connected toLexington by roads that all merge into Lexing-ton's Central Business District (CBD). Lexing-ton's present-day street system can be likenedto spokes on a wheel; each spoke is a road thatconnects the county seat with downtown Lex-ington and each is named after the townwhere it originates. In addition to the sixplaces named above, Old Frankfort Pike (andthe newer Leestown Road) from Frankfortand Harrodsburg Road also wind their way toLexington. In more recent years, an outerwheel was added to Lexington's street patternwith the construction of four-lane New CircleRoad (Ste Nte Route 4) around the city, with thedowntown hub at the center. More recently, anew semicircle has been added further out (tothe south) called Man O'War Boulevard, alsofour-lane and built to alleviate the heavy traf-

Table 1: The Inner Bluegrass: Populations of Cities and Towns

1870 1910 1950 1990

Cynthiana 1,771 3,603 4,847 6,497Danville 2,542 5,420 8,686 12,420Frankfort 5,396 10,465 11,916 25,968Georgetown 1,570 4,533 5,516 11,414Harrodsburg 2,205 3,147 5,262 7,335Lawrenceburg 393 1,723 2,369 5,911Lexington 14,801 35,099 55,534 207,075Nicholasville 1,089 2,935 3,406 13,603Paris 2,655 5,859 6,912 8,730Versailles 3,268 2,268 2,760 7,269Winchester 1,616 7,156 9,226 15,799Total 37,306 82,208 116,434 322,021

17


fic flow on New Circle Road and the expand-ing suburbs. It has been in the south, especial-ly the wedge from Richmond Road toHarrodsburg Road, that suburban develop-ment has been most rapid since the 1960s.

Emergence of Other Towns and CitiesThe next largest towns to emerge were settledabout the same time. All became county seatsas their respective counties were formed (thelast of the eleven Inner Bluegrass counties tobe formed was Boyle in 1842). Older than Lex-ington is Harrodsburg, the first permanentpioneer settlement in Kentucky, founded in1774. Harroc-sburg was officially establishedand designated a county seat by the Virginialegislature in 1785, when Mercer County wasformed; the town of Harrodsburg was not in-corporated unti11836. Three places founded inthe 1780s were Danville (1783; incorporated in1836), Lebanon (incorporated in 1784 by theVirginia legislature), and Hopewell (1789).Lebanon was renamed George Town in 1790and Hopewell was renamed Paris, also in1790, to correspond with the naming of Bour-bon County after the French royal house. Dan-ville was the first site of TransylvaniaUniversity in 1783 before it was relocated toLexington in 1789. Danville boasts Centre Col-lege, established in 1819, which has gained areputation as one of the region's best smallliberal arts colleges. Also in Dar Dille, the Ken-tucky School for the Deaf was established in1823 and was the first public institution of itskind in the nation. Georgetown is sited at animportant spring and is noted for its excellentwater supply. Danville, Paris, and George-town became the county seats of their respec-tive counties after they were formed, that is,Boyle (formed in 1842), Bourbon (1785), andScott (1792), respectively. In 1792 Winchesterwas established and it became the county seatof Clark County in the same year when thecounty was formed. Versailles (pronouncedVer-sales in Kentucky), named in honor ofGeneral Lafayette's birthplace in France, thecounty seat of Woodford County, was estab-lished in 1792 and incorporated in 1837.

Woodford County contains some of the.world's most famous thoroughbred horsefarms including Airdrie Stud, Pin Oak, ThreeChimneys, and Lane's End, the latter of whichis a regular stopover for Queen Elizabeth IIduring her visits to the Bluegrass. Midway(1990 population of 1,300) is also an incor-porated town in Woodford County and it hasthe state's only women's college, Miaway College. Cynthiana, named for the daughters(Cynthia and Anna) of founder Robert Har-rison, was established as the Harrison countyseat in 1793 and was incorporated in 1860. Jes-samine County was formed in 1798 and itscounty seat, NVholasville, received its charterin 1812 and was incorporated in 1837.Nicholasville, located on a major nineteenthcentury north-south route to Lexington, istoday the residence of many who work andcommute to Lexington. The newest placeamong Inner Bluegrass towns is Lawren-ceburg, which was incorporated in 1820 andbecame the county seat of Anderson Countyupon its formation in 1827. Lawrenceburg wasan important stop on the Frankfort to Har-rodsburg Road and is today known for thebourbon distilling industry in surroundingAnderson County.

None of these places has attained the sizeor significance of either Lexington orFrankfort (Fig. 5). Lexington, at the heart ofthe Inner Bluegrass region, grew to becomethe focal point for the region and today is thedestination for many in the region who areseeking higher-order medical treatment, cul-tural opportunities, or shopping malls, toname but a few of the reasons for traveling tothe big city. Indeed, the region and its urbanhierarchical system is a good real-world ex-ample of Walter Christaller's Central Placeideas. Frankfort probably should not haveemerged to be the place that it is today butgiven its very early selection as state capital,its site on the Kentucky River, and its situationbetween Louisville and Lexington, it has at-tained a size and importance that belies whatits site and situation warrants.

18 2


Figure 5: Cities and Towns of the Inner Bluegrass: Population Growth, 1970-1990

30,000

25,000

20,000

15,000

10,000

5,000

0

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census 1970 - 7990

ect

;=.

0

8

The smaller places of the Inner Bluegrassand their own hinterlands have several com-mon features. They are all centers for market-ing the agricultural commodities produced inthe rich soils of the area's farms. Most impor-tant among the commodities are burley tobac-co and livestock, especially beef cattle andthoroughbred horses. Historically, most InnerBluegrass counties produced whiskey buttoday only two counties, Franklin and Ander-son, still have distilling industries. All. InnerBluegrass cities and county seats have beensuccessful in attracting industry. The mostnotable is the huge Toyota plant that openedin Georgetown in 1987; since then the plantand production of the Camry automobile haveexpanded, as has employment. Tax incentivesnotwithstanding, the excellent situation of theInner Bluegrass in the eastern United States,together with the accessibility afforded by the

U

Interstate highway system, were among themajor reasons for Toyota to select this loca-tion.

Lexington itself is the world's largest bur-ley tobacco marketing town and most of thetobacco produced in nearby counties istransported to Lexington for sale at auctions.Lexington has also become the center forthoroughbred and standard bred horse salesand today buyers from around the worldcome to Lexington to bid on the horses. Thesales each year realize millions of dollars. Theregion's history and beauty have also broughtanother bonanza to the region: tourists.Today, the eleven-county Inner Bluegrassregion accounts for more than 20 percent ofthe state's tourist employment and more than20 percent of its tourist travel expenditures.

192 7


The Population of the

Inner BluegrassRichard Ulack

In 1810, the Inner Bluegrass region was thepopulation center of the state and containedmore than one-half of the entire state'spopulation, but by 1900, the eleven InnerBluegrass counties accounted for only 9.2 per-cent of the state total. During most of thetwentieth century, and especially during thelast several decades, the region's populationhas been growing more rapidly than that ofthe state so that by 1990, nearly 13 percent ofthe state's population resided in the InnerBluegrass. In 1990, 467,785 persons wereliving in the eleven-county region, or an in-crease of nearly 30 percent over the number in1970. For comparative purposes, the InnerBluegrass grew considerably faster than both

Jefferson County, which lost population (-4.3percent), and the state as a whole, where thepopulation increased from 3.2. million to near-ly 3.7 million (or by 14.5 percent) (Table 2).During the 1950s and 1960s, the InnerBluegrass population also grew at a rate morerapid than that of the state (39.2 percent vs. 9.3percent), but the population of JeffersonCounty increased more than 43 percent.

Suburbanization Led the ChangesOne explanation for the changes in populationgrowth trends for the periods 1950-1970 and1970-1990 is that the suburbanization (and, to

a lesser extent, "exurbanization") was takingplace and new (and old) residents weremoving to the "bedroom" communities andcounties surrounding the cities of Louisvilleand Lexington and, indeed, most of the otherlarger places across the nation. The accom-panying choropleth map of the state clearlyshows that a number of the counties con-tiguous to Jefferson and Fayette Counties andin the Cincinnati area grew rapidly during the

Table 2: Population, 1990 and Population Growth, 1950-1970 and 1970-1990

Inner Bluegrass, Jefferson County, and Kentucky

County/RegionAndersonBourbonBoy leClarkFayetteFranklinHarrisonJessamineMercerScottWoodfordInner BluegrassJeffersonKentuckySource: 1993 Kentucky Deskbook of Economic Statistics

Population Population Growth(#)

1990 1950-1970 1970-199014,571 4.16% 55.71%

19,236 4.08% 4.11%

25,641 2.72% 21.58%

29,496 27.47% 22.44%

225,336 73.03% 29.26%

43,781 32.96% 26.97%

16,248 3.07% 14.76%

30,508 40.79% 73.94%

19,146 8.99% 19.96%

23,867 18.54% 32.98%19,955 28.74% 38.25%

467,785 39.16% 29.27%

664,937 43.42% -4.33%

3,685,296 9.30% 14.50%

20


Figure 6: Kentucky Population Growth (%), 1970-1990

Percent change

Net decrease or no change

0.01 to 20.00

20.01 to 40.00

40.01 to 80.00

More than 80.00

SOURCE: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census

most recent twenty-year period (Fig. 6). Jes-samine County, immediately south of FayetteCounty, grew by nearly 75 percent andOldham County near Louisville, increasedfrom 14,687 in 1970 to 33,263 in 1990, or morethan 125 percent! Exurbs, or bedroom com-munities not contiguous to the central cities,also expanded during the recent period. Oneexample of this is the development of newhomes in places like historic Midway inWoodford County, a county in which thepopulation increased by nearly 40 percent be-tween 1970 and 1990.

Not all of the Inner Bluegrass is comprisedof people who live in cities and towns, sub-urbs, and exurbs. According to the U.S.Bureau of the Census, slightly over one-quarter (27.4 percent) of those living in theeleven-county region reside in what is definedas "rural" areas. If we exclude the populationof Fayette County, then over one-half (50.1percent) of the population live in rural areas.Clearly, only a very small portion of thispopulation is actively engaged in agriculturalpursuits (4 percent of those employed; seebelow), but these figures demonstrate that thepeople of the Inner Bluegrass region remain

firmly tied to the rural landscape. The vastmajority of those employed commute to jobsin the nearby county seats, in Lexington, or inother cities and towns in the area.

Jobs, Education, and GrowthA reason for the overall rapid population in-crease in most of the Inner Bluegrass countiesis the employment opportunities available inLexington, Georgetown (Toyota), and theother county seats and towns where employ-ment in industries and service activities isavailable. In 1991, the region's rate of un-employment was only 4.7 percent, comparedto 7.4 percent for the state. Fayette County'srate of unemployment was 3.8 percent andonly one county, Clark, had a rate (7.5 per-cent) above the state average. Of thoseemployed in the eleven-county region, only 4percent were employed in agriculture, thesame as the rate for the state as a whole. Notsurprisingly, there is a high percentageemployed in government jobs in FranklinCounty where the state capital, Frankfort, islocated and a high percentage working inmanufacturing in Scott County, where theToyota plant is located (Table 3). With the ex-ception of Fayette, Franklin, and Jessamine

21

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Table 3: Non-Agricultural Employment by Type of industry, 1991

County/RegionEmployment in

all Industries Mfg.Type of industry (%)W & R ServicesTrade*

Govt.*

Anderson 2,940 31.67% 28.03% 10.78% 18.84%Bourbon 5,481 21.20% 24.48% 12.42% 15.53%Boyle 11,937 25.84% 29.43% 22.42% 12.97%Clark 9,947 29.93% 24.65% 14.13% 11.70%Fayette 135,015 12.69% 25.76% 27.00% 16.51%Franklin 28,106 12.82% 14.21% 11.75% 53.01%Harrison 4,900 39.80% 23.29% 15.35% 12.33%Jessamine 7,607 19.85% 29.71% 14.82% 16.08%Mercer 5,735 38.20% 21.64% 14.89% 11.46%Scott 11,819 47.28% 17.24% 14.62% 9.62%Woodford 8,688 44.06% 14.76% 13.77% 8.30%inner Bluegrass 232,175 18.94% 23.63% 21.75% 19.66%Jefferson 358,420 18.65% 25.90% 27.83% 9.10%Kentucky 1,369,320 20.49% 25.42% 21.52% 14.75%

*Wholesale & Retail Trade; State & Local GovernmentSource: 1993 Kentucky Deskbook of Economic Statistics

counties, all the region's counties have agreater share employed in manufacturingthan is the case for the state as a whole. Ap-parently, local officials have been successful inattracting industry to their areas, a goal ofnearly all chambers of commerce and city offi-cials. Lexington, as noted in a previous chap-ter, is a white-collar city, which the percentageemployed in services clearly indicates. Bycomparison Jefferson County, whereLouisville's central city is located, in 1991 hada higher percentage working in the manufac-turing sector (18.65 percent) and a smallerproportion working in government jobs (9.1percent) than did Fayette County.

As befits an urban region like the InnerBluegrass that can be characterized as havinga disproportionate share of professionals,white-collar workers, and skilled factory-workers, numerous health facilities, and sixinstitutions of higher learning (the Universityof Kentucky and Transylvania University inLexington.

Kentucky State University in Frankfort,Georgetown College in Midway, Centre Col-lege in Danville, and Midway College in Mid-way), the population gets high scores onsocio-economic indices. For example, personalper capita income in 1990 ranged from a lowof $14,500 in Anderson County to a high of$23,493 in Woodford County; that of FayetteCounty was $19,320. These figures comparewith the state average of $14,965 (1992 data);the range for all Kentucky counties was fromthat of Woodford County, the highest in thestate, to a low of $7,663 in McCreary Countyin the state's eastern mountains.

The educational level of the region'spopulation is considerably higher than theaverage for the state. In 1990, nearly two-thirds (64.6 percent) of the state's adultpopulation (those 25 years and older)graduated from high school and 13.6 percenthad Bachelor's degrees. Comparable figuresfor Fayette County, which ranked first among

22 6 0


all of the state's counties in education, were80.2 percent and 30.6 percent, respectively.Among the other ten counties in the InnerBluegrass the lowest levels were in HarrisonCounty (62.4 and 8.6 percent) and the highestwere in Franklin County (76.0 and 21.3).

The racial and ethnic diversity of theregion's population remains homogeneousrelative to that typical of much larger urbanregions. The Black population of the elevencounties accounts for 9.6 percent of theregional total; Fayette County is 13.4 percentBlack; and that of the other ten, more ruralcounties amounts to only 6.0 percent of thetotal population. Comparable percentages forthe nation, state, and Jefferson County in 1990were 12.3, 7.1, and 17.1, respectively. TheAsian population was of course quite smalland the 3,713 Asians counted in Fayette Coun-ty comprised only 1.6 percent of the county

total but was relatively greater than that of thestate (0.5 percent) or Jefferson County (0.7 per-cent). A large research university, Toyota andother Japanese industries, and a growingAsian retail community have meant an ab-solute and relative increase in the number andpercentage of Asians in the county. That thenumber and influence of Asians and their cul-ture has grown in the community is indicatedby the fact that in 1974 (when the authormoved to Lexington) there was but one Asianrestaurant in LexingtonWing's Teahouseand that served Chinese, American, and Italiancuisine. The Teahouse has long since closedbut today, according to the most recenttelephone directory, there are twenty-eightChinese restaurants (about six of which arecarry-out), four Thai, three Japanese, one In-dian, and one Vietnamese restaurant in Lex-ington. The city has truly become acosmopolitan place.

Bluegrass CultureKarl B. Raitz

Consider the following juxtapositions found inor adjacent to central Kentucky's InnerBluegrass Region: burley tobacco productionand policies that restrict smoking in publicbuildings; bourbon whiskey distilling and drycounties; horse race tracks with their on andoff-track wagering and conservative fun-damentalist churches; legal game cock fightingand the ASPCA.

The diverse, even oxymoronic character ofthe attitudes and habits reflected by these com-monplace institutions has a heritage that ex-tends back to the region's early Angloimmigrants. Surveyors and early explorersthought this area an Eden. They conveyednews about the region's rich limestone landsoack to the Virginia settlements east of the Ap-palachians, prompting migration of some ofthat area's wealthiest plantation owners west

to Kentucky by the 1780s. Many of these in-dividuals repr. aented Virginia's landedgentry. They were often Anglophiles, admirersof things English, including the politically-powerful rural English squirearchy. These Vir-ginians were often well-educated in English orAmerican colleges and they strongly in-fluenced the emerging central Kentuckyeconomy and political structure. Some of thesesettlers established plantations that producedcattle, horses, hemp, or tobacco. Othersprovided legal and financial services. Derived,in part, from England's Cavalier society, Vir-ginian cultural traditions included an aris-tocratic bent that underwrote slave-holding asa labor force, service in government as a linkto peestige and power, large land holdings as ameasure of status, and relished gambling, be iton horse races or fighting cocks, as an ac-cepted mode of entertainment. Theytransplanted riding-to-hounds English-stylefox hunting from Virginia to constitute a formof recreation that could be imitated only atconsiderable expense, and thus would guaran-tee exclusivity.

23


The Common People ArriveA second group of migrants were commonpeople of English, Scottish, Irish, or Scots-Irishheritage, many coming from Maryland, NewJersey, and Pennsylvania by way of the OhioRiver. They became laborers, tenants, orfarmers; some started businesses or becamemerchants. These folk comprised an early un-derclass that had to scrape to obtain and holdland that, in the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies, was the key to political power. If theVirginia aristocrats and their Kentucky des-cendants tended toward the Episcopal andPresbyterian faiths, the common peopleseemed to prefer the Baptist teachings that asmall group of preachers brought to the InnerBluegrass in the early 1780s.

For the next eighty years the BluegrassRegion's population would gradually in-crease, the common folk and the African-American slave groups together out-numbering the politically and economicallypowerful planters and professionals. The Irishpotato famine in the 1840s would pushthousands from that small island onto shipsthat brought them to America. Many madetheir way to central Kentucky where theyfound employment as farm laborers or asmasons who built the rock fences that edgedfarm fields and aligned roadways. Theregion's perspective continued to be agrarian,and even county seat businesses were de-pendent upon the productivity of surround-ing farms. Crossroads Lexington emerged asthe most rapidly growing town but its largestindustries focused on hemp processing, ropewalks, tobacco warehousing, and distilling;activities all closely tied to rural fecundity.The countryside around Lexington evolvedinto the nation's premier pastoral nursery forblooded cattle and race horses, an industryfounded upon stock imported from England,Ireland, and other European sources.

Links to the OutsideAfter the Civil War, outsiders began to in-filtrate the Bluegrass economy and society.The Southern Railroad and the Louisville and

Nashville Railroad laid tracks that linked theland-locked region to the industrial North.The most influential new immigrants werewealthy business types who bought or builtKentucky horse farms. Most pre-Civil Warstock farms had been functional, althoughseveral had features that imitated the Englishsquires' country estates: formal English gar-dens, deer parks, and great brick or stonehouses. In a display of conspicuous consump-tion unmatched elsewhere in rural America,the new immigrants augthented theirBluegrass farms with great architect-designedbarns and outbuildings, white-washed orblack asphalt-painted fences, and hard-sur-faced lanes. One horseman's farm on ParisPike included stone barns, a large dairy, andemployed a thousand people, many of whomlived in Lexington and rode the interurbanrail line out to the farm each morning. If theera of outside investment in Bluegrass horsefarms had a golden age it was the period fromabout 1910 to 1930, but although fewer out-siders built avocational farms during theDepression and World War II, activityresumed in the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1956, the International BusinessMachines corporation built an electrictypewriter plant in north Lexington. A newgeneration of educated and technically-oriented immigrants began to arrive in thecity. Their presence attracted others. TheUniversity of Kentucky began to expand itsprograms and faculty. Eastern Kentucky'scyclical boom-depression economy pushedmany people out of that region's miningtowns and into central Kentucky. These addi-tional layers of human and cultural diversityfocused on Lexington and the county seattowns, and the Inner Bluegrass region beganto change its complexion yet again.

Two Centuries of JuxtapositionsTwo centuries have passed, but the traditionsand values of the old Virginia aristocracy andthe common folk are still juxtaposed. Some-times these cultural traditions are manifest onthe land; as often they are disguised by con-

24

3 ti


temporary habitude, yet lurk just below thefacade of modernity. Dietary preferences stilllean toward country ham, bean soup, cornbread, and fried fish and chicken. Bourbonremain:. a preferred spirit for many. Tobaccofarmers, until the most recent spate of lawsrestricting smoking in public buildings, en-joyed the support of state politicians andfederal agricultural price support programs.Horse farms, racing, and hunting all furnishiconsbe they art prints of race horses or foxhunts, photographs of palatial homes, theracing silks of Kentucky Derby winners andsilver mint julep cups, or images of cupolaedand fan-windowed horse barnsthat peopledisplay to signify their acceptance of this dis-tinctive amalgam of regional traits. State agen-cies employ them to design brochures thatwill attract tourists, shopping center and busi-ness building architects incorporate them intotheir structures, and city boosters re-createthem in expensive bronze at a Lexingtongateway. Even the common people tend tovenerate the contemporary squirearchy, oftenreferring to a notable horse or farm as thoughit was public property.

Of course one could add to this list of cul-tural traits and attributes a masculine devo-tion to hunting and fishing, especially ifhigh-powered boats or four-wheel drive pick-ups are involved, a love of and identificationwith university basketball teams, be they atthe University of Kentucky or t'Ae Universityof Louisville, or the preference for doing busi-ness with a handshake instead of a contract.Yet these are characteristics that might befound elsewhere too, especially in the South.To find the region's core cultural attributes,one need only look back over the last two cen-turies and trace the threads of aristocracy andcommon folk down to the present.

LexingtonRichard Schein

Lexington became a town in the last twodecades of the eighteenth century. Theoriginal town plat, submitted to the Virginialegislature, was oriented to the Town Branchof Elkhorn Creek, which now runs underWater and Vine Streets downtown (Fig. 7).The plan's focus was a town commons, aspace now bisected by Broadway and partiallyoccupied by Triangle Park and the HyattHotel. Around the Commons was a series ofone-half acre commercial in-lots, which, inturn, were flanked primarily on the east byapproximately one hundred five-acre out-lots.This original plat forms the nucleus of the cityto this day; a sense of the scale is gained byrealizing that present-day Gratz Park occupiesalmost three out-lots in the original plat.

Showing Great Promise, EarlyLexington showed great promise at the turn ofthe nineteenth century and was perhapssecond only to Lancaster, Pennsylvania as themajor inland American urban place. It quicklyemerged as the commercial center of not justthe Bluegrass, but for much of the trans-Ap-palachian West. The town's population in-creased from 350 to more than 4,000 peoplebetween 1790 and 1810 and Lexington alsobegan to exhibit the timely signs of quasi-in-dustrial development. Lexington was sooneclipsed economically by Ohio River townssuch as Louisville and Cincinnati, whichbenefited from upstream steamboat traffic by1820. Industrially overshadowed, Lexing-tonians instead established the town as theAthens of the West. Lexington was dominatedby an urban elite who often drew battle linesalong Presbyterian and Episcopalian distinc-tions, and focused their energies on estab-lishing (and fighting over) TransylvaniaUniversity and other institutional accouter-ments of the urbane middle landscape, includ-ing coffee houses, an Athenaeum, finishing

25

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academies, ballrooms, and a hospital. Lexing-ton became the county seat, and ultimately awealthy country market town dominated bythe collection, sales, and processing needs ofhemp, cattle, and, by the end of the century,burley tobacco. The city is still the largest bur-ley tobacco market in the world, and fromNovember through late winter there is asteady stream of trucks bringing the dried,stripped, and bundled crop to markets such asthe one on Fourth Street just west of JeffersonStreet.

The physical town grew from the originalplat. Broadway and Main streets formed themain urban axes, and Main Street became thecity's primary retail, service, and governmentdistrict. Roads leading to surrounding countyseats left Lexington as radial axes, connectingthe market town with its surrounding hinter-land and forming the spokes of Lexington'spresent wheel-like urban morphology. Theseroads maintain their namesRichmond,Nicholasville, Winchester, Parisasreminders of the Bluegrass urban hierarchy(Fig. 8). The railroad arrived before the CivilWar, one branch skirting the town, the othertraversing the routeway of present-day Waterand Vine Streets. The former still exists, form-ing a light industrial and warehouse cordonjust beyond the urban core as it existed mid-nineteenth century. The latter route, nowdefunct, served as a second industrial-warehouse corridor through the city's heartalong the Old Frankfort Pike/Vine-WaterStreet/Winchester Road axis; a fact still evi-dent by comparing the canyon-like feel of thataxis with Main Street's retail, government,and financial character.

The end of the Civil War and manumis-sion in Kentucky brought an exodus ofAfrican-Americans from the surroundingcountryside to Lexington. African-Americansaccounted for 80 percent of the urban popula-tion growth in the decade after 1860 so that by1870 Blacks made up almost one half the Lex-ington population, up from a fairly steady rateof about 30 percent before the war (today the

percentage is less than 13). Manyentrepreneurial land developers subdividedproperties around the city's then-periphery inorder to accommodate the increased housingdemand. The result was a series of blackenclaves, creating a micro-geography ofsegregation scattered throughout the largercity. Examples include Pralltown, Smithtown,Good low town, and Adamstown (nowcovered by Memorial Coliseum on the UKcampus). The placement of these Blackresidential areas in part shaped the city's sub-sequent racial geography to the present day.

Into the Twentieth CenturyMeanwhile, middle class, white Lexingtoncontinued to grow. Urban residential sub-divisions expanded beyond the urban core,into a surrounding ring of exurban gentlemanfarms whose boundaries are the basis for con-temporary sections or neighborhoods of thecity.

Streetcar lines often provided residentialaccess, such as the Main Street route that con-nected downtown with the 36-acre Bell Estateand the several hundred-acre Henry Clay es-tate, Ashland. Today, the Bell house stands asa community center in Bell Court and Ash-lan:1 remains as a museum and centerpiece ofthe Olmsted Brothers-designed subdivisioncalled Ashland Park. Low-order retail centersoften emerged at streetcar turning points (stillevident at the corners of High and Euclid,Woodland and High, Loudon and Broadway),and the lines often included terminal attrac-tions such as the Fair Grounds (now the RedMile track) or the "City of the Dead," the Lex-ington Cemetery.

Perhaps the most notable twentieth cen-tury urban change in Lexington is the city'smassive suburbanizationespecially south ofthe citysince World War Two (Fig, 8). Thecity's hottest political debate is over the ex-pansion of the urban service area. Between1950 and today the city and county govern-ments merged (in 1973); the urban populationhas increased from around 50,000 to 225,000;

27

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two circle roadsMan O'War and New Circle(the inner circle route or Route 4)circum-navigate the urban core; Interstates 64 and 70

arrived on the scene; malls, shopping centers,and the strip (most notably on the radial axes)have overtaken downtown retailers; theUniversity of Kentucky has rapidly expanded;several industrial concerns have been lured tothe citymost notably IBM (now Lexmark) inthe 1950s; and the city has emerged as the ser-vice provider for an enlarged rural hinterlandthat extends on the east at least as far as theWest Virginia border. Today only 12 percentof the Lexington workforce is employed inmanufacturing (Lexmark leads with 4,000employees) ai.el the largest employer in theurban area is the 1. Jniversity of Kentucky(10,000).

Lexington as Unique Yet TypicalAlthough certain aspects of Lexington'surban history and geography are unique, inmany ways its social and spatial develop-ments are similar toif not exactly likemany middle sized cities across the country. Acontemporary map can be drawn to divide thecity along traditional socio-spatial lines ofclass, ethnicity, functional use (retail,wholesale, residential, etc.), transportationaxes, and so on. Lexington generally appearsas a late twentieth century galactic city whoseurban core has been abandoned by all butfinancial and government workers, touristsand basketball fans (Rupp Arena seats 23,000),a few gentrifiers, and the urban underclass, infavor of the burgeoning suburbs by the af-fluent middle class. Such a map of the city isuseful. It provides us with familiar signpoststo the urban landscape; a guide we can readand from which we can (accurately) predictthe location of the nearest McDonald's, therequisite urban festival market or VictorianSquare, the upscale suburban shopping mall,and inner city, federally subsidized housingprojects. Yet, such a mental map also hidesfrom us the dynamic citywhether thatdynamic is historical (such as this narrative),social, or geographicalemphasizing the inter-connections, conflicts, and tensions within

Lexington. Two examples make this point.Both can be visited.

Thoroughbred Park is the southernentrance to Main Street and downtown today.On sunny days tourists can be seen admiringthe bronze horse statues racing to the finishline and grazing on the slope overlooking thepark. The Park anchors the downtown core asa stable, formal presence in the urbanlandscape. Its imagery promotes Lexington'spopular association with the glamour and ex-citement of the horse industry; and the Parkwas built with private contributions to thatimage. It is mirrored by the office complexsituated catty-corner, whose architectural fea-tures can be read as visual quotations offamous Bluegrass horse barns. Yet the site hasnot always been so stable. Over time, thecorner of Main Street, Vine Street, andWinchester Road has served as the pointwhere different sides of the city cometogether; including the retail downtown (MainStreet), the railroad corridor (Vine-Winchester), a primarily African-Americansection of the city (to the northeast), and anearly twentieth century middle class area(southwest on Main Street). This interstitialsite has truly been an in-between place, andwas once the home of Lexington's mostfamous brothel. The dynamic tensions be-tween these competing versions of Lexingtonhave been conquered by the Park designers,promoters, and builders. Thoroughbred Parkrepresents more than a nice place to take fami-ly snapshots. It also is the present-day victorin competing definitions of just what is Lex-ington.

A few blocks up Main Street fromThoroughbred Park is the fifth Fayette CountyCourthouse, a handsome Romanesque struc-ture dating from 1900 standing in a publicsquare as the tangible symbol of localdemocracy. The building's north side is calledCheapside and it is filled with the usual his-toric plaques and statues of civic heroes. Thesign missing would tell you this was once afamous slave market, where Kentucky slaves

29

38


were sold down the (Ohio) river at public auc-tion. The square may be public, but Cheapsideis an invisible reminder that American defini-tions of democracy and public are ever-chang-ing. The representation of history in theCourthouse square landscape is a selectiveone, as is any map of the city. No doubt

Cheapside means different things to differentLexingtonians. The trick to knowing Lexing-ton, or any city, is to read not just the visible,static landscape, but to learn the social rela-tions and hidden dimensions of urban histori-cal geography.

30

3`J

INTERACTIONS AND CONNECTIONS

Lexington as a Center forTransportation,Communications, andInformationStanley D. Brunn

Lexington serves as the major transportation,communications, and information node forthe Bluegrass region. Those functions havehistorical roots that continue to bestrengthened with new and improved ways oflinking individuals, businesses, and officeswith locations within and outside central Ken-tucky.

TransportationLexington is one of the apexes of what Ken-tuckians term the "Golden Triangle," Louis-ville and the northern Kentucky-Cincinnatimetropolitan area being the other two. Thesides of the triangle are the major interstatesthat link Kentucky with states to the north,south, east, and west (Fig. 4). Lexington is atthe junction of 1-75 (which goes fromMichigan to Florida) and 1-64 (that extendsfrom West Virginia to St. Louis), and is alsothe nexus of a number of major east -west (U.S.60) and north -south (U.S. 27 and U.S. 68)roads.

Three features of the road system in theBluegrass are distinctive. One is that the

present major highway system parallels close-ly the early Native American and explorertrails and routes within the state. For example,U.S. 25 closely parallels the old Tennessee-Ft.Washington Road north of Lexington and theWilderness Road in Southeast Kentucky (Fig.9); the Mountain Parkway roughly parallelsthe Old Kentucky State Road.

The second is the radial road pattern, withLexington as the hub and the major roads asspokes linking Lexington with adjacent coun-ty seats. A cursory glance at the state highwaymap reveals, for example, that Versailles (inWoodford County) is connected to Lexingtonvia U.S. 60 (Fig. 4). Similarly, Georgetown(Scott County) is astride U.S. 25, Paris (Bour-bon County) is connected to Lexington viaU.S. 27/68, Winchester (Clark County) viaU.S. 60, Richmond (Madison County) via In-terstate 75 and U.S. 25, and Nicholasville (jes-samine County) via U.S. 27. These countyseats are both regional service centers anddormitcy suburbs for those working in Lex-ington's industries and services. Although anoutsider, especially someone who grew upwith the rectangular land survey system, maythink that it is difficult to navigate in alandscape with radial streets, local residentsuse these major arteries to give directions tostrangers. it is not unusual to hear a Lexingtonnative describe the city's major streets like thehands of a clock. Richmond Road is fouro'clock, Nicholasville Road about seven, andWinchester nine. Or one takes Old FrankfortPike (10 o'clock) to visit the state capital orHarrodsburg (8 o'clock) to visit Shakertown.

031


Figure 9: Central and Eastern Kentucky's Historic Routes

LEGEND

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The third major feature of Bluegrass roadsis that the settlement patterns along thesespokes resemble beads on a string. That is,Lexington is the largest bead, the county seatssmaller, and in between are a series of othersettlements (smaller beads) which indicatesmaller populations and lower densities. Thistransportation and settlement pattern isvisible when flying over the Bluegrass region.At night Lexington's bright lights are verymuch in evidence as are the heavy traffic den-sities, especially along 1-64 and 1-75. Thesmaller stars of the satellite county seats andthe fewer and more widely separated smallercommunities can be seen by the keen ob-server.

The importance of the road system inCentral Kentucky reveals not only thelinkages of surrounding counties and countyseats to Lexington but to surrounding states aswell. Kentuckians, many of whom prefer lifein small towns and the open country to largecities (and Lexington-Fayette County, with apopulation of over 225,000, is considered alarge city to most Kentuckians!), think nothingof commuting sixty or ninety minutes (eachway) daily to Lexington, Louisville, or Cincin-nati. Some will even work in the cities duringthe week and return home on weekends. Thusthe interstate traffic is heavy on Sunday nightsand Friday afternoons. Some travel dailyalone, while others form car pools. It is not un-usual to see six or a dozen cars and pickupsparked near major rural intersections during

32


the day; a check of their counties of originfrom the license plates reveals the distancessome women and men travel to work for low-or medium-wage jobs. Thus, the commutingfields for Lexh. r--'s businesses and in-dustries are extensive Another close look atthe map would reveal there are no other largecities in eastern Kentucky, except for the tri-state Ashland-Huntington complex, which hasabout 250,000 residents. Charleston, West Vir-ginia and Knoxville, Tennessee are the nextlargest cities east and southeast of Lexington.

Highways and railroads are the major net-works connecting Central Kentucky to the restof the nation. The Lexington business com-munity often uses the city's mid-continentlocation in its promotion to prospective com-panies. One can drive to Washington withinnine hours, Charlotte within eight, Atlantawithin seven, Nashville within fiye, St. Louiswithin seven, Chicago within eight, andDetroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh within sixhours; indeed, a major selling point for Lex-ington is that it is within one day's drive ofmore than one-half of the nation's population.Lexington sees this central location as a majorattraction for businesses wishing to expand tothe growing E" enbelt markets in the South.Probably few would consider Lexington aSunbelt city, rather it might be termed a hingecity or shadow city between the older industrialSnowbelt cities and regions experiencing sloweconomic growth and those Sunbelt regionswhere population and economic growth areexpected to continue. If one examined theeconomic linkages of businesses in Lexington,one would probably discover the city is morenorth than south oriented. That is, thebranches and offices in Lexington and theBluegrass region are more likely to have theirheadquarters located in Pittsburgh, Chicago,or New York rather than Atlanta, Memphis,Orlando, Nashville, or Dallas-Ft. Worth.

Lexington is served by Delta and U.S. Air,which connect the city to major hubs in theeastern U.S. Almost all traffic out of Lexingtongoes through Atlanta (Delta headquarters) or

Pittsburgh (U.S. Air offices). Commuter flightslink Lexington with Cincinnati, Louisville,Nashville, and smaller cities in surroundingstates. Lexingtonians wishing to make directflights to Europe leave from Louisville or Cin-cinnati. The major railroads serving theBluegrass region are CSX and NorfolkSouthern, linking Lexington with Louisvilleand Cincinnati. The nearest Amtrak station isin Cincinnati.

CommunicationsLexington is the major newspaper andtelevision hub for not only the CentralBluegrass but also eastern Kentucky. Thenewspaper hinterlands and viewersheds fromLexington-based media extend roughly half-way between Lexington and Louisville antiLexington and Cincinnati. As with transporta-tion, there is no city in size or economic im-portance east of 1-75 that competes withLexington's prominence. Lexington has onemajor daily newspaper, the Lexington Herald-Leader and a weekly cultural-arts magazine,Ace Magazine. There are also three televisionstations which are part of major national net-works, a Fox entertainment channel, and afifth connected with the University of Ken-tucky (KET, or Kentucky EducationalTelevision). Cable television provides Lex-ington-area residents with access to severaldozen channels; in eastern Kentucky, how-ever, there is no cable and satellite dishes are acommon feature in the landscape. The Lex-ington Herald-Leader publishes articles of inter-est to readers in Lexington and FayetteCounty as well as the many small towns andcounties to the east and south. Thus, discus-sions of health care in Appalachia or coal min-ing strikes are considered just as importantnews as are the woes facing Kentucky's tobac-co farmers, Lexington's downtown renais-sance, or the prices of horses at fall auctions.Editorials cover topics of interest to this widereadership as well. A weekly editorial columnentitled "Appalachian Voices" addresses con-cerns by residents on that region's problems,identity, and future. Legislative decisionsmade in Frankfort about the Bluegrass and

42 33


eastern Kentucky will be covered in the Lex-ington paper as will accounts of importantevents in rural counties. These include wet-dry referenda, controversies over school con-solidation, local officials being indicted forsome criminal activity, local protests againstenvironmental polluters, or the opening of anew branch factory (again, usually with head-quarters to the north). A casual survey of thenewspapers for sale in stands outside motels,Wal-Marts, and fast food restaurents in thesmall towns in the eastern third of the statewould reveal that the Lexington paper is soldalongside the local county paper, publishedonce or twice a week.

The coverage of news about Central andEastern Kentucky is also evident in reportingon local television evening news. There is verylittle news about Cincinnati or Louisville, butthere are reporters on the spot if newsworthystories appear in Morehead, Ashland, Hazard,Pikeville, Berea, Corbin, and Danville, all con-sidered within the communications hinter-lands of Lexington. While accounts aboutfloods, mine explosions, snow days (whenschool is canceled), and mountain festivaldays are not major local events for Lexing-tonians, they are for those east of 1-75. Furtherevidence of this communications shed is fromthe sponsors of local television news. It is notunusual to see ads from local car dealers, fur-niture stores, pesticide and fertilizer stores,and even attorneys in small towns surround-ing Lexington, another indication of theregion's small town populations and ruraleconomy. Lexington services that will be ad-vertised include hospitals, fast food and fancyrestaurants, and automobile and furnituredealerships. Sometimes even the accent usedby the speaker will be more Eastern thanCentral Kentuckian.

Although the local newspapers andtelevision stations are important ingredientsin the communication services provided byLexington, there are several others. The Lex-ington Public Library is downtown and fourbranch libraries are located in the suburbs.

There are also main and branch libraries of theUniversity of Kentucky as well as the collec-tions and various services of TransylvaniaUniversity, Lexington Baptist College, Laxing-ton Theological Seminary (Disciples of Christ),and Lexington Community College (part ofthe UK system). In Midway (between Lexing-ton and Frankfort), Midway College has astrong equine studies program; Georgetownhas Georgetown College (Southern Baptist);Frankfort's Kentucky State University is apredominantly African American university;Berea is home to Berea College; and the Pres-byterian Centre College is in Danville. Most ofthese colleges and universities draw their stu-dents from Kentucky.

Basic to the communications landscape isthe number and diversity of bookstores. Asidefrom those near campus which serve the largeUniversity of Kentucky student population,there are a number of others that cater to thecommunity and much of eastern and southernKentucky. There are various specializedbookstores, ranging from those with interestsin educational games and school items, usedand rare books, alternative cultures, religion(more than a half-dozen), and new books on avariety of subjects. These stores are located indowntown Lexington and in suburban malls.

InformationThe colleges and universities mentionedabove are major disseminators of informationto the state and outside. Nationally and inter-nationally recognized programs are found atthe University of Kentucky, including thosedealing with equine parasitology, rural healthdelivery, toxicology, robotics, and aging(especially Alzheimer's disease).

Lexington has companies that issue majorpublications for specialized agricultural inter-ests and offices for major national companies.The horse industry, (yes, it is an industry)dominates much of the informationlandscape. The information services includethe library at Keene land Racetrack, the JockeyClub (part of the Jockey Club Information Ser-

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vices) which has computerized genealogicalrecords of all thoroughbreds, the publicationof Bloodhorse, a major industry journal, andDaily Racing Form, which is used daily atracetracks nationwide. Additional horse in-dustry services within and outside theBluegrass can be obtained in a check of theyellow pages of the Lexington phone direc-tory. There are horse dealers, breeders, andappraisers, attorneys, veterinarians, truckers,insurance agents, those selling horse feed andthose building fences, barns, paddocks, andgates. Lexington architectural firms designbarns and pastures and design picturesquepastoral landscapes.

Lexington is also headquarters to othereconomic interests. Coal companies with of-fices in Lexington include Island Creek, SouthEast, and a half-dozen others. The BurleyTobacco Growers Association and the BurleyAuction Warehouse Association are in Lexing-ton, as are a half-dozen major tobaccowarehouses that serve the tobacco farmers inthe Bluegrass. The Center for Tobacco andHealth on the UK campus receives revenuesfrom the sales of cigarettes to examine thehealth effects of smoking and to perfect adanger-free product.

Numerous major associations have nation-al offices in Lexington. These include theAmerican Saddlebred Grand National As-sociation, the U.S. i'olo Association, and theNational Tours Association, Inc. The majorstate lobbying offices found in this Bluegrasscity include the Kentucky Cattlemen's As-sociation, Kentucky Fertilizer and Agricul-tural Chemical Association, KentuckyVeterinarians Medical Association, and Ken-tucky Council of Churches. Private companiesinclude Rand McNally Cartographic Services(in Versailles and Lexington) and Toyota, inGeorgetown.

These specialized communication and in-formation services are important, not only be-cause they serve Lexington and CentralKentucky but because they have national and

global linkages as well. Lexington is part ofthe World Trade Center network that linksbusinesses and offices around the world.There are exchanges of information oneconomic growth, foreign investment, andmarketing trends. Lexington's internationallinkages are promoted with annual presenta-tions at trade shows nationwide and throughits Sister City programs. Lexington's threesisters are all major centers of horse breedingand racing: Deauville, France; County Kil-dare, Ireland, and Shizunai, Japan. Interna-tional money is apparent in the city andregional economy, not only in the Toyota in-vestment in Georgetown and sales of horsesand horse farms to Japanese, Irish, British,Canadians, and Middle Easterners (especiallysheiks from the United Arab Emirates), but incompanies investing in coal mines, timber-lands, branch plants, and prime agriculturalland.

Lexington is an important node for publi-cation of specialized journals, investment, andscientific research, and also for a number ofmajor national and international conferencesheld in the city and nearby each year. Thereare conventions and meetings of a scholarly,public service, religious, entertainment, andvocational nature. Many of these are held inconjunction with faculties at the University ofKentucky and other universities nearby. Thecity also seeks to develop its clean industryand strong service economy by hosting avariety of entertainment activities. Lexingtonattracts a variety of cultural activities, apartfrom large basketball and football audiences.These include rock groups, individual concertperformers, traveling musical and theaterproductions, tractor pulls, rodeos, the Rin-gling Brothers circus, and antique and craftshows. Not surprisingly, the city takes pridein its national prominence as a center forbluegrass music, horse racing and sales. Manyvacationers visit the Kentucky Horse Park,which has two major museums and aschedule of horse events and showsthroughout the year. Historic sites, cemeteries,and museums are visited by locals and out-of-

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towners as are programs at the Opera House,several neighborhood theaters, and by severalmusic groups, including the Lexington Phil-harmonic Orchestra.

These are important elements for Lexing-ton as it carves out its role it the growingeconomies associated with informationproduction and exchange.

Lexington's Role and the FutureIn sum, Lexington serves a very importantrole in the collection and dissemination ofgoods and services within Central Kentucky.Its highway linkages join surrounding coun-ties, county seats, and small towns to Lexing-ton. Those same highways place the city in anetwork of other places (larger and smaller) in

eastern North America. Its role as a com-munications center is of value both to localresidents, industries, and services and toselected groups outside, especially those de-pendent on receiving information about spe-cialized economies or services that originate inthe Bluegrass. The city's future as a majortransportation, communications, and informa-tion center seems assured with anticipatedpopulation growth, expanded airline services,continued international investment, and amajor place on the information highway.Those futures will be linking the region'suniversities and business with other parts ofthe nation and world, especially in specializedagricultural activities, investment, health,entertainment, and tourism.

Modem Lexington as aRegional CenterRichard Schein

According to historian Richard Wade, "thetowns were the spearhead of the frontier." Lex-ington was a crucial trans-Appalachian spear-head of Euro-American settlement at the endof the eighteenth century. Although locallypreceded in its founding by nearby Har-rodsburg and Boonesborough, Lexington sooneclipsed those early outposts as the entrepotfor the new western territories of the UnitedStates after the American Revolution. Lexing-ton was well situated as a terminus of severalmajor migration and trade routes across theAppalachians; most notably the Ohio Riverroute and the Wilderness Road, whose finalmiles led across country to the Inner Bluegrassfrom Maysville in the north and the Cumber-land Gap in the south (Fig. 9). Its place in themiddle of a rich agricultural landscape andastride major arteries of transcontinentaltransportation made Lexington both the center

of a regional market economy and a criticalnode in early trade links between east coastcities such as Philadelphia and New York, andthen-western ports, like New Orleans. By 1800,Lexington was the largest city in the west, amercantile center to a vast region rapidlybeing incorporated into a burgeoningAmerican cultural and economic system.

Nineteenth Century Brings a New RoleThe nineteenth century, however, saw Lexing-ton overtaken as the transmontane regionalcapital by river cities such as Cincinnati,Louisville, and St. Louis; its role as a mercan-tile center was overshadowed by an Americaneconomic shift to industrial capitalism. Despiteits slip in the national urban economic hierar-chy, Lexington consciously and purposely es-tablished and perpetuated a reputation as acultural center: the city reveled in itsnineteenth century designation as the Athensof the West. To make up for their loss ofwestern economic primacy, Lexingtoniansfounded and supported institutions such asthe only insane asylum in the United Statesoutside of Philadelphia as well as Transyl-vania University which, for example, grantedsixty-seven degrees in 1826 to students from

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eleven states. According to Richard Wade,Lexington enjoyed a "reputation and distinc-tion throughout the entire west."

Although Lexington's national economicreach was replaced by its role as a westerncultural capital, the city did not cease to havean economic function. Rather, it continued asthe market center for a curtailed economichinterland primarily focused on the InnerBluegrass. Lexington also became the FayetteCounty seat. The city's early situation, wealth,and well-educated elite combined with itslocal political designation and economic im-portance, ensured that Lexington would be atleast a nineteenth century regional capital inthe broadest social, economic, and politicalsense of the term. The spatial extent of thatregion was checked on the west and north bythe similar regional functions of Cincinnatiand Louisville. To the south and east, how-ever, Lexington was relatively unchallengedin its regional dominance and its influence ex-tended beyond the Bluegrass, especially intothe Appalachian sections of eastern Kentucky.

By the early twentieth century, geographerDarrell Davis could note that Lexington wasthe focus of numerous primary and secondaryfederal and state highways, an interurbanelectric railroad, and several major railroads.He also recorded that Lexington in the 1920swas the retail center for two-thirds of theBluegrass counties, while its wholesale reachextended beyond the Bluegrass into easternKentucky and parts of Tennessee, servingmore than one million people (at a time whenthe state's total population was about 2.5 mil-lion). Lexington's importance to and Bluegrasssymbolic dominance of eastern Kentucky isperhaps best captured in local colorist JohnFox, Jr.'s famous novel The Little Shepherd ofKingdom Come, published in 1903. The book'srags-to-riches Appalachian mountain hero isdiscovered to be a blue-blooded Bluegrassaristocrat whose ultimate reward is to take hisrightful place within the Lexington squirear-chy. Apparently, making it in the mountainsmeant making it to Lexington.

All Roads Still Lead to LexingtonToday, at least within central and eastern Ken-tucky, it would still appear that all roads stilllead to "Athens." Contemporary Lexingtonmay no longer be the entreptit for the trans-Appalachian west. It may no longer be eventhe Athens of the west. Yet, a contemporaryroad map depicts Lexington as the hub of aseries of radiating spokes connecting the city 's225,000 people with surrounding county seatsand secondary towns and the city is still at thetop of the region's central place hierarchy.Lexington's place at the center is more thansimple geometry. The city maintains a physi-cal centrality within the Bluegrass while itstands as the economic, social, and symboliccapital of the region broadly defined.

Lexington's regional dominance is mosteasily discerned through the city's economicretail and service functions. The city hasboomed since World War Two, and nowhereis that fact more apparent than in the tangiblefeatures of seemingly endless suburbs, com-mercial strip developments, shopping centers,and malls. Many of these stores serve morethan the immediate urban population, a factsuggested by a recent informal study by un-dergraduate geography majors at the Univer-sity of Kentucky. Students took a sample ofmore than 2,000 automobiles over a four-dayperiod at the city's largest shopping mall inorder to ascertain shopper origins. Licenseplates were recorded as indicators of driverorigins (Kentucky registers and identifiesvehicles by county). Although most shopperswere from the immediately surrounding retailhinterland (defined as the seven counties ofthe innermost Bluegrass), a significant propor-tion of the automobiles were registered in anexpanded hinterland that reached on thesouth and east as far as Tennessee, Virginia,and West Virginia.

The mall example suggests that contem-porary Lexington is the economic focus ofboth central and eastern Kentucky. Historicalgeographical circumstance has limited thecity's hinterland on the north and west where

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it overlaps with the functional presence ofLouisville and Cincinnati; while to the southand east there has been little inter-urban com-petition for an expanding Lexington presenceinto the Appalachian portions of the state. Theindustrial penetration of outside capital, rail-roads, and laborers is a centuries-old story inAppalachia, and Lexington has traditionallybeen a jumping off point between the outsideand the mountains. That relationship is rem-nant today and accounts, in part, for theregional dominance of Lexington beyond theinner Bluegrass.

Several examples make the point. The Lex-ington Herald-Leader is the city's newspaper. Itenjoys a Sunday circulation of more than150,000 and the paper's blue, free-standinghome-delivery boxes can be seen on countryroads 150 miles (241 kilometers) from the citylimits. Its "Local" and "Letters to the Editor"sections reflect a wide ranging circulation asthe only paper linking all of Kentucky's Ap-palachian counties. Lexington's five televisionstations and weather reports are as likely toinclude flash-flood warnings for mountainresidents as storm ct. nditions for the Bluegrassportion of tornado alley. The city has ninehospitals, seven of them major medicalfacilities. Medical helicopters regularly flyoverhead from remote accident sites, and thecity often reverberates with ambulance sirensarriving not only from Bluegrass towns likeParis and Versailles but also from vans bear-ing names like Barbourville, Pikeville, Somer-set, and London, all cities well beyond theBluegrass limits. A patient in the University ofKentucky hospital and clinic is likely to meetpeople from all over the eastern half of thestate in its waiting rooms. A well-qualifiedsurgeon from a well-equipped hospital inSomerset once remarked that to many of hispatients, a medical problem in Somerset is in-variably the doctor's fault, while one in a Lex-ington hospital is an act of God. Thoseout-of-staters who arrive in Lexington viaairplane land at Bluegrass Field with Kentuck-ians who still have several hours of hard driv-

ing over mountain roads ahead of them beforethey finally reach home.

Symbolic Heart of the Bluegrass and BeyondBeyond (yet related to) the obvious economiccentrality of Lexington is the city's continuingrole as the symbolic heart of the Bluegrass andcapital of the state's central and eastern parts.Lexington is more than just the site of theregion's largest malls (indeed, newly-ex-panded Fayette Mall on Lexirgton's southside is now the state's largest) and bestequipped hospitals; it also represents in urbanform that which is characteristic of the widerregion. For example, tobacco and horses arecentral to Kentucky's collective personality aswell as its economy. Lexington is the largestburley tobacco market in the world, and ishome to the Burley Tobacco Grower's As-sociation which administers tobacco pricesupports. Bluegrass horse farms are marked inred on tourist maps by little horsehead sym-bols, centered on Lexington. Horse imageryabounds within the city (and, indeed, allacross the state: witness the Kentucky licenseplates), from signs advertising banks, topublic statuary, to the architectural form ofshopping malls and office parks (see KarlRaitz's chapter on horses in this guide). Infact, when Calumet Farm, arguably the mostfamous of Bluegrass horse farms, recently wasput up for auction as part of bankruptcyproceedings, former Lexington mayor ScottyBaesler seriously suggested that the city buyonly the farm frontage in order to maintain forLexington the white fenced-image of rollingpasture land and gentleman farms.

Examples of Lexington's centrality to wideranging social networks are numerous. Thesmall size and physical proximity ofFrankfort, the state capital, means that Lex-ington has usurped some regional andstatewide political functions. The Lexingtonnewspaper disseminates political news to aregional audience, and early morningwestbound traffic (or late afternooneastbound) along the broad, four-lane ribbon

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of US 60 between the two cities suggests thatmany state workers prefer to live in the Lex-ington environs rather than in the capital. TheUniversity of Kentucky is a great promoter ofKentucky unity and pride through itsacademic activities and especially its basket-ball program. Lexington is the habitat of theUK Wildcats, the holy shrine of the vast ex-panse of Wildcat Country proclaimed bybillboards and bumper stickers statewide.Lexington is the collection center for amilkshed with an eighty-mile radius, and thecity's stockyards are long-standing in a statewhere cattle production is the third largestagricultural activity. Although hardly famousfor its liberality in a national context, Lexing-ton does display a greater range of people andlifestyles than much of Kentucky. The cityserves as a safe haven or mecca for Kentuck-ians searching for a degree more tolerance and

diversity than is found in conservative partsof the hinterland.

In short, by almost any measure, Lexing-ton has developed over the last two centuriesas an important central place serving a wideregion. The city stands as the economic focusof a vast hinterland, stretching at its greatestextent from the Ohio Valley to the TennesseeValley. It symbolizes the need for and exist-ence of a regional urban focus by hundreds ofthousands of Kentuckians, not to mention afew residents of at least three adjoining states.Lines of transportation, communication,economy, polity, and social cohesion radiatefrom the city, visibly and invisibly, to tietogether a vast territory and numerous humanactivities to the city, the modern regional capi-tal of central and eastern Kentucky.

Horse Breeding and RacingKarl B. Raitz

The Kentucky automobile license plate fea-tures two symbols that evoke one of the state'smajor industries: a striding mare and foal, andthe roof line of Churchill Downs, the race trackin Louisville where the nation's most pres-tigious thoroughbred horse race, the KentuckyDerby, is held each May. The horse industryhas several important facets. Thoroughbredbreeders produce horses that run at the tracksacross the country and in Europe. Standardbred horses also race but wear a harnessit iscalled harness racingand pull a two-wheeledsulky and driver. Some horse farms breed Ten-nessee Walking Horses, Arabians, or huntersand jumpers. Each year Kentucky horse farmsproduce between 8,000 and 9,000thoroughbred foals out of a national crop ofabout 49,000. No other state produces morethoroughbreds than Kentucky. As an industry,horse breeding and racing employs more than

79,000 people in the state. From an estimated 4to 5 billion dollar investment in horses, horsefarms, and related equine businesses acrossthe state, people receive more than 1.3 billiondollars in wages and salaries or about 4.5 per-cent of the total wage and salary income of allstate residents. Perhaps the best known seg-ment of this industry is thoroughbred breed-ing and racing. Of course the Kentucky horseracing industry is a major part of the nationaland international racing business, but of all thestates where thoroughbreds are bred andraced, none plays a more central role in foster-ing the sport than Kentucky. Within Kentucky,no region is more important to horse breedingand racing than the Bluegrass, especially theInner Bluegrass.

The Obvious Geographical QuestionThe obvious geographical question, then, iswhy have the people involved in breeding,training, and racing horses chosen to con-centrate their horse farms and associated busi-nesses in this relatively small portion of amedium-sized state? The Lexington phonebook Yellow Pages, for example, lists five pages

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of horse-related businesses, including 191farms, international horse brokers, horsetransportation companies and horse vanmanufacturing firms, farriers and saddlemakers, computerized pedigree record-keep-ing firms, and the largest collection of equineveterinarians in the world.

To answer the question we need to con-sider several contributing factors. The first ishistoric precedent and inertia. Horse racingbegan in the Cavalier Colonies of Marylandand Virginia before the Revolution as short,quarter-mile sprint races between two horses,and racing was reserved, by Virginia law, forgentlemen. When horses with Arabian bloodand greater stamina and endurance were im-ported into Virginia, beginning in the 1730s,races lengthened to a mile or more and ovaltracks replaced the short straight race paths.Virginians and Marylanders began migratinginto the Bluegrass Region by the 1780s bring-ing their habits and customs with them, in-cluding horse racing. In part because southerngentlemen farmersbe they in Virginia orKentuckyimported the best breeding stockthey could afford from Europe, their horseswere faster, won more races, and so werefavored as racers and breeding stock bypeople across the eastern states. By the 1840s,the Kentucky Bluegrass region had becomeAmerica's thoroughbred nursery. Althoughthe Civil War disrupted the horse industry,and many farms lost their stock to Union andConfederate cavalries, the business revivedquickly and race tracks were common in moststates east of the Mississippi RiverKentuckyhad seventeen race tracks, for example, andhundreds of tracks appeared across the Mid-dle West from Ohio west to Missouri. Thedemand for racing stock rose with the numberof tracks and Kentucky's horse farms suppliedthe best horses.

After Historic Precedent, EnvironmentalCircumstanceSpecial environmental circumstance is thesecond factor that helps explain the concentra-tion of horse breeding in the BluegrassRegion. The Ordovician limestones that un-derlay the area produce deep, fertile soils thatin turn yield lush grass, ideal for livestock,especially horses. The area is far enough souththat grass will grow eight or nine months ofthe year, allowing farmers to rely upon pas-tures for feed rather than the more expensivebaled hay. The summers are warm, but not sohot that horse; do not thrive, and the (usually)mild winters are conducive to mares foaling inFebruary or March without concern for new-born colts or fillies being exposed to sub-zerotemperatures.

A favorable climate also relates to horsetraining and the national racing circuit that ispredicated upon the change in seasons. Be-cause of Kentucky's temperate winter andsummer seasons, outdoor horse training cango on almost year around. Training or racinghorses in cold northern climates on frozentracks risks injury to horse and jockey alike.Although some horse racing is conducted inselected northern cities almost all year long,most trainers and the best racing stock followan annual circuit, with Kentucky at the mid-point. The Florida and Louisiana race tracksoperate during the winter months and trainersand their horses concentrate in these areas. Asthe season progresses, they move north to HotSprings, Arkansas, and then, by early April, toLexington, Kentucky. After the month-longseason at Lexington's Keene land Race Courseends, the horses move to Churchill Downs inLouisville for May, and from there some mayhead for Pimlico Race Track in Baltimore, orthe Belmont course in New York. By mid-summer thoroughbred racing reaches tracksin Saratoga, New York, or New Hampshire.Then as fall approaches, the entourage againheads south, pausing for another season inKentucky during October and Novemberbefore returning to Florida and Louisiana forthe winter.

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Other Geographic Factorsand Good GenesContinued profitable production of race hor-ses also depends upon a third factor, transpor-tation requirements. Horse transport, in turn,is related to two other facts: one is that theBluegrass Region has the largest concentrationof high quality race horse stallions and maresin the nationthink of it as a bank ofthoroughbred genes. The other is a law thatprohibits breeding thoroughbreds by artificialinsemination. Since stallions and mares mustmate naturally, rather than through artificialmeans as is so popular with dairy and beefcattle farmers, they must be located in closeproximity to one another. Part of the reasonfor this is the convenience and safety con-siderations of moving multi-million dollarhorses over public roads, part relates to theshort fertility period for mares and the need tobring the mare to the stallion as soon as she isable to conceive. Some horse farms keep astallion or two on the premises, but mostfarms specialize in one aspect of the horse in-dustry; not all. For example, a stud farm mayhave ten or more stallions and provide studservice to anyone who can afford the feeupto 100 thousand dollars or more for one seasonor a single mating of mare and stallion. Otherfarms may specialize in raising mares andfoals and preparing the young horses for therace track.

National and international economic con-nections also support a continuing horsebreeding and racing industry in central Ken-tucky. The horse business is capital intensive.Farm land may cost $10,000 per acre ormoreand that's for raising grass, not high-valued vegetable or fruit crops. Proper horsebarns with carefully engineered air circula-tion, fire-preventing sprinkler systems, andfloors of pliable materials that will drain wellbut not aggravate a horse's leg joints or ten-dons, may cost a half million dollars or moreeach. Some farms have several such barns.Buying breeding stock is also expensive;quality mares often command higher pricesthan stallions. Although one can purchase athoroughbred for $10,000 or even less, the

stock with the best blood lines will usually re-quire an investment of at least $100,000 peranimal, and often much more than that. Thenone must consider breeding fees,veterinarians' feessome farms hire a vet fulltime for their staffinsurance, feed,employees to handle the stock, fenceswhiteplank fence may cost $10,000 per milehardsurface roads, and so on.

Many Kentucky horse breeders andtrainers are local farmers but they oftendepend upon investors from other places tobuy their stock or provide capital to continueoperations. Other farm owners are wealthysports people whose fortunes stem from in-dustry or inheritance, and who indulge inhorse racing as a hobby and keep a Bluegrassbreeding farm as an avocation. In thenineteenth century this latter group was rep-resented by James Ben All Haggin who mademillions as an attorney in California, andwhose special forte was the adjudication ofland claims and water rights. Born in the Har-rodsburg area southwest of Lexington, Hag-gin returned to the Bluegrass in 1887 andbegan to assemble a 10,000 acre propertynortheast of Lexington that he called Elmen-dorf. The farm became a show place, one ofmany built by outside money. Today theBluegrass Region attracts international farmowners from England, the Middle East, andJapan, as well as North America, and newhorse farmsassembled from existingcroplandappear whenever the nationaleconomy is strong.

A Happy CoalescenceThis happy coalescence of historic, physical,transportation, and economic factors, hasresulted in a horse industry that is of substan-tial economic benefit to the state. It attracts in-vestment from far-flung sources. TheBluegrass countryside is naturally beautiful,but the horse farms have refined portions ofthe countryside into a high art of rolling greenpastures lined by white and black plank fen-ces. In May, when the farm lanes are linedwith flowering dog woods and red buds, few

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0

Lexington and Kentucky's inner Bluegrass Region

places in America are more beautiful. Visitorsseduced by cleverly produced brochuresprepared by state or city Chambers of Com-merce or tourist bureaus contribute millions of

dollars annually to motels, restaurants, andother local businesses as they attend the racemeets or simply drop off the visually sterileInterstates to revel in the luxuriance of it all.

Automobiles and theJapanese Connection:Toyota in KentuckySusan Roberts

The Inner Bluegrass region is now home to thelargest Japanese automobile plant in theUnited States. The Toyota Motor Manufactur-ing (TMM) facility located on the outskirts ofGeorgetown in Scott County, some fifteenmiles (24 kilometers) north of Lexington,employs 5,200 people and turns out 2.20,000 to240,000 Toyota Camrys per year (see Fig. 4).By 1995 the facility will be able to produce400,000 cars a year (or 1,095 cars per day). Theeconomic effects of the Toyota plant inGeorgetown have been felt throughout theregion. The social, cultural, and political in-fluences of such an enormous investment by aJapanese corporation have also been sig-nificant.

Georgetown, Kentucky, is not the onlysmall town in North America to have beentransformed by the arrival of a Japanese autotransplant. Nine transplants are in the UnitedStates and three in Canada. Nor was George-town the first. By 1985 when Toyota decidedto locate its first plant in Kentucky, the Hondaplant in Marysville, Ohio, had been producingcars for three years, and Nissan had startedproduction at its Smyrna, Tennessee, plant in1983. Such plant start-ups are indicative of are-shaping of the North American, indeedglobal, geography of automobile production inthe 1980s. This shifting geography ofautomobile production largely resulted fromthe spectacular rise of Japanese motor vehicle

manufacturing. In 1960 Japan produced165,000 cars and these accounted for just 1.3percent of the world's total automobileproduction. In 1989, by contrast, Japanproduced nine million autos, or 26 percent ofthe world's total production. The rise ofJapanese auto production has been pairedwith a decline in United States productionover the same period. The total output of allthe Japanese transplants in the U.S. is stillmuch less than the combined output of theU.S. "Big Three" auto makers (General Motors,Chrysler, and Ford) but nonetheless representsa major challenge. The Big Three's share of theU.S. new car market has fallen over the lasttwenty years and the market share for importsand transplant-produced vehicles has in-creased.

Japanese Cars in the U.S.: Why and Where?Why would Japanese auto manufacturers setup transplants in the United States? TheJapanese producers, as late as 1982, did nothave a single car production facility outsideJapan. The U.S., however, is the world'slargest market for new cars and as the marketshare of new car sales captured by theJapanese producers increased it made sensefor the Japanese producers to consider locat-ing production closer to their market. An alter-native (and more cautious) strategy was to setup a joint venture with an American producer.In 1984 Toyota set up a joint venture withGeneral Motors in Fremont, California (Fig.10). The New United Motor Manufacturing,Inc. (NUMMI) produces GM Geo Prizms andToyota Corollas as well as small pickuptrucks. A more significant impetus to Japaneseinvestment in the United States was that since1981, the U.S. and Japan had negotiated volun-tary export restraints that had restricted thenumber of vehicles the Japanese could bringinto the US. in a year. More recently, in the

42


L/

Figure 10: Japanese Automobile Factories in the U.S.

FremontTOYOTA*

^-11

+ Joint Venture with General MotorsJoint Venture with Chrysler Motors

Source: Economist, Feb. 1991

NormalMITSUBLSHI

East Liherr

UBARU

Ma ilie'F3aye to

Georgetown 1.TOYOTA

Smyrn

1990s, the strength of the Japanese Yen(against the world's major currenciesinclud-ing the U.S. Dollar) has meant that carsmanufactured in Japan and sold in the U.S.are expensive compared to domesticallyproduced vehicles. By manufacturing the carsin the United States this effect of the strongYen (or more generally the risk of changingexchange rates) can be avoided. The strongYen (versus the Dollar) is the main reason forthe recent transplant expansions.

The next question is: why are the Japanesetransplants located where they are? Thetransplants are, with the exception of theNUM-14I plant, sited along a corridor fromMichigan to Tennessee (Fig. 10), Six con-tiguous states have transplants: Michigan, Il-linois, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, andTennessee. Most (although not all) of thetransplant operators selected greenfield sites

in rural areas away from the traditional motorvehicles producing locations such asMichigan. As geographer Peter Dicken (1992,296) has noted: "Mile advantages of beingable to start from scratch, on greenfield sites,with newly designed plants and with a hand-picked workforce prepared to accept newworking conditions and practices are enor-mous."

In a case-by-case study, Robert Perucci(1994) has found that conventional locationalexplanations do not capture some of the mostimportant factors in the transplants' locationdecisions. In particular, he notes that the roleof state government is extremely important.To lure each transplant to the corridor, stategovernments have offered parent Japanesecompanies attractive incentive packages. Torecruit Toyota, Kentucky's initial incentivepackage included land acquisition, site im-

43


provements, highway improvements, andemployee education and training, all paid forby the state. The total cost of Toyota's incen-tives to the Commonwealth of Kentucky hasbeen variously estimated at $125,000,000 to$350,000,000. A recent University of Kentuckystudy (commissioned by Toyota) put the fig-ure at $147,000,000 (Haywood 1992).

Kentucky as an Activist StateThis level of state involvement has ledscholars to note the rise of the activist state inprocesses of industrial location as states com-pete against one another for investment. In thefinal stages of the Toyota location decision,Kentucky was competing against Georgia, In-diana, Kansas, Missouri, and Tennessee. TheGovernor of Kentucky at that timeMarthaLayne Coffinsbelieved she had lost theSaturn plant (a GM Japanese-style productionventure) to Tennessee and was determinednot to lose Toyota. She made eight visits toJapan as part of a sustained campaign to sellthe virtues of her state to Toyota executives.

On December 10, 1985 the LouisvilleCouriet -journal's headline announced: "It's of-ficial: Kentucky gets Toyota." Thegroundbreaking ceremony for the George-town plant took place in May, 1986 and thefirst Camry was produced in May, 1988 withvolume production beginning two monthslater. The plant has since expanded consider-ably and in October, 1993, the one millionthCamry rolled off the line. The plant nowproduces at an astonishing rate: one Camryevery fifty-five seconds. The Georgetownplant is on an eighty-five acre site and theoriginal manufacturing plant had a tc tal areaof 3.7 million square feet. In 1987 company of-ficials announced the first expansiona $300million power train plant. This plant manufac-tures four-cylinder engines and axles for theCamry. In 1992 the power train plant was ex-panded to produce six-cylinder Camry en-gines that had previously been imported fromJapan. The largest expansion has been of themanufacturing facilities that were enlarged inan $800 million, 3.2 million square foot expan-

sion announced in 1990, and began produc-tion in March, 1994. This expansion willdouble plant capacity. Beginning in the fall of1994, the new facilities will be the world'sonly source of the Avalon, which replaces theCressida. This is a more expensive model thanthe Camry and has been designed for thenear-luxury market in the United States andelsewhere.

Competition for jobs at the Toyota planthas been fierce. For example, according to aNovember 15, 1989 Lexington Herald-Leader ar-ticle, Toyota received more than 67,000 com-pleted applications for the original 3,000 jobs.Applicants go through a lengthy series of as-sessments. All of those selected had com-pleted high school and 25 percent had collegedegrees. One-quarter of the first group ofhires were women and 13 percent wereminorities. Toyota gives preference to Ken-tuckians and as a consequence more than 96percent of their employees are from Kentucky.In fact, the company boasts that workers comefrom 112 of Kentucky's 120 counties. Workersat the Georgetown plant are organized intoteams and are known as team members.Teams are led by team leaders, not foremen,and each team is responsible for a set of as-sembly operations. The production methodsemployed at Georgetown are typical of whatis known as lean production. This type of massproduction was perfected by Toyota in Japanand has been transferred (and modified) to itsfacilities around the globe. Lean production ischaracterized by the just-in-time process inwhich parts are not stockpiled in warehousesbut are manufactured in exact amounts bysuppliers in response to short-run demand.Toyota works closely with its parts suppliersto coordinate production and to develop com-ponents. In addition to just-in-time partssupply, the Toyota plant also uses anotherhallmark of lean production: kaizai or con-tinuous quality improvement. Each teamworks hard to insure quality output and toimprove the efficiency of the productionprocess. This is to cut waste and to reduce theamount of time spent repairing or reworking

44

53

Lexington and Kentucky's inner Bluegrass Region

to correct mistakes. In sum, the lean produc-tion system is much more flexible than the ar-chetypal mass production assembly lineoperations typical of the Big Three Americanauto makers in the 1970s. Lean production isbetter able to respond to changing marketconditions.

The Regional ImpactPerhaps the biggest questions Kentuckians askabout the Georgetown plant concern thefacility's regional effect. Beyond the immedi-ate influence of payroll (in excess of $180 mil-lion per year), the repercussions of the Toyotapiant on Georgetown and Scott County hasbeen tremendous. Tax revenues from Toyotasupply more than 20 percent of the localgovernments' yearly operating budgets;property prices in the area have increased; theschool budgets have grown from contribu-tions by Toyota (in lieu of taxes) and so on. Inaddition to the automobile plant payroll andits multiplier effects (as pay gets spent in theregion) the investment by Toyota also hascreated construction jobs, and a demand formaterials and equipment for site develop-ment. Further multiplier effects are seenthrough the network of suppliers that hasdeveloped in Kentucky and elsewhere (Fig.11). Toyota, like all transplant operators, isunder severe pressure to increase the domes-tic content of its vehicles. This entails buyingmore and more material (such as steel) andparts (such as wheels) from domestic sources.Indeed, TMM buys parts from 174 U.S.-basedsuppliers. About forty Kentucky firms nowsupply parts for the Camry. At least nine ofthese firms are Japanese-owned and seven arejoint ventures between Japanese and U.S. cor-porations. The issue of ownership and thedefinition of what is a domestic supplier or adomestic product remains politically chargedand is unresolved. Nonetheless, these plants

employ a significant number of employeeswho in turn contribute to other sectors of theregional economies where the plants are lo-cated, although in the case of the Kentuckysuppliers it is worth noting that only one(Armco Steel in Ashland) is located in thestate's poorest regionthe Appalachian east.

Some intense political battles have beenfought over the state-granted incentives pack-age for Toyota. Some people have argued thatKentucky overpaid for the plant but as theplant has expanded this criticism is heard lessoften. Although Toyota has an active publicrelations program to counter any criticism andto keep relations with the community agree-able, critics have raised questions about plantworking conditions. For example, the work isphysically stressful and some have said theteam idea is mentally stressful as workers aresocialized to be good corporate citizens. Theenvironmental effects of the plant are largelyunknown, but local environmentalists are con-cerned that the site is monitored properly andthat waste is disposed of safely.

A Kentucky Window on the GlobalEconomyThe huge Toyota plant in Georgetown offers afascinating window on the changing globaleconomy. The development of the biggestautomobile manufacturing plant in the U.S.outside a small county seat in the KentuckyBluegrass has brought with it changes to thelocal economy, politics, society, and even cul-ture. The globalization of the world-economyhas created new geographies of such scopeand complexity that old categories are throwninto question. Consider the arguments overwhether or not the Toyota Camry built inGeorgetown, Kentucky by American men andwomen can be considered an American car.Boundaries are being blurred.

45

54


Figure 11: Toyota's Kentucky Suppliers (1993)

HENDERSON

MORGANFIELD

CARROLLTON

SHELBYVILLE

LO ISVIUEBRANDENBURG

NEWPORT

V

go. BARDS TOWN. . E.o1; NICIMASVILLE

RICHMOND

wiNclizsrgit

El*.kertrrOwn ,.,....',5A SPRINGFIELDs '''" .LEBANON

v.",

-A,N 4"...

I ,,,d, '.... ,IVORGANTOWN

°.11Ns4ruNGGIASGOVV,...---e t SOMERSET"c"',-;sniev

Supplier Prad7tOwntrahlpASt11,811P1

ARMCO Stee17Ste4(lapan/US)j

BARDSDOWNMina Masters -Door trim (Japan US)

BOWLING GREENNASCO-Coil springs ( Japan/US)

BRANDENBURGIntac(011n)-Paint (Japan)

CARROILTONATO ananical-Coating pistons (US)

ELIZABETHTOWNAnibrake-Drum brakes (Japan/US)APIkehnoglass-Glass (Japan)Gates Rubber-Hoses (US)

FRANKLIN%Alla Precision-Throttle bodies (Japan)

GEORGETOWNJohnson Controls-Seats (US)

FRANKLIN

GLASGOWACE Controls- Cables ( Japan/US)Central Spring-Cables (Japan)

HENDERSONGibbs Dk Cast-Alum. die castings (US)

LEBANONAngell Mfg.-Trim (US)Curtis Maruyasa-Tubing (Japan/US)

LEXINGTONAshland Petroleum-Gasoline (US)Breamit Chemical-Solder, flux (US)Bnuexing Bearing-Scaler (US)General Rubber-Adhesive inserts (US)Qtrik Md.-Metal stamping (US)Starlbol Mfg.-Metal stamping (US)

LOUISVILLEAlm-Rename-Paint (US)Ashland Chemkal-Solvent (purge) (US)Burns Enterprises-Die cut paper (US)DJ Inc.-Molding (US)Johnson Controls-Battery (US)Loulavilk Forge-Forged crankshafts (US)Premiere Polymers-Resins (US)

MAYFIELDGeneral The -Tires (Germany)

MORGANFIELDUnited Technologies- interior plastic (US)

MORGANTOWNSumitomo -Wiring harnesses (Japan)

NICIIOLASVILLEThompson International-Wheel covers (US)

PARISCentral Light ABoy-Aluminum wheels (Japan)Central Mfg.-Steel wheels (Japan)

RICHMONDContinental Metal-Stamping (US)Process Mfg.-Metal stamping (US)

SHELBYVILLElehikoh-Mirrors (exterior) (Japan)

SPRINGFIELDSpringfield Products-Armrest assemblies (Japan)

VERSAILLESUnited L-N Glass-Glass (Japan/US)

WINCHESTERApollo-Grease (US)

Source: Lexington Herald-Leader, Dec. 1993

46

BEST COPY AVAILABLE

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Nijel Clayton and Kate Greer Fischer

The following six learning activities or instructional units are presented inthe context of the topics and geographic locations discussed in this siteguide, Kentucky, the Bluegrass region, or Lexington. Teachers can adaptthe activities to other states, regions, and cities by altering the topics orplaces. Included are five state outline maps (drainage, physiographicregions with names, physiographic regions without names, counties withnames, counties without names) that teachers can reproduce and use inthe context of the activities included, or with other activities. We hope youfind the iearning activities and maps useful in teaching about Kentucky, orabout the geography of your state or region.

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JO


Kentucky's Physical LandscapesNijel Clayton

Introduction: This lesson addresses the physical and cultural features of Kentucky's six physicalregions.

Grade Level: Grades 4-5

Time Required: 3 weeks

Themes/Key Ideas: Location, place, region

Vocabulary: absolute and relative location, mental map, scale, climate, culture,neighborhood, population, sense of place, boundary, state, region, physical landscape,cultural landscape, natural resources

Objectives:

Students will recognize that everything has a location.

Students will use geographic sources of information and data for a specific purpose.

Students will explain the influence of geographic factors on human movement.

Students will compare regions to identify unifying characteristics.

Students will analyze physical characteristics (e.g., landforms, waterways, climate,natural resources) to explain human and regional relationships.

Students will understand that people's use of a place can change over time.

Materials:

Map of Kentucky's physical regions

The Learning Activity:

Executing the activity: Show students a map of Kentucky with the physical regions andexplain that each region is defined by its distinctive landform features. Discuss eachregion including an emphasis on points of local interest. Assign groups of students toeach physical region and explain that each group will be responsible for designing atravel brochure for its region. Students will need to investigate their region todetermine those physical and cultural features to include in their brochure. Studentscan use several kinds of information for these brochures: photos, videos, historicalinformation about the settlement and use of their region's resources, maps showingcities, roads, lakes, rivers, woodlands; information on the region's plants and animals,and any other information available that will help the students assemble aninformative brochure. Sample brochures of non-Kentucky regions and attractionswould be helpful, as examples. Upon completion, the groups will present theirbrochures to the class.

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Concluding the Activity: Following the presentation of the brochures, the class willdiscuss the project and the following items:

What makes Kentucky unique?

What makes Kentucky's physical regions unique?

Did the brochures present a realistic picture of the regions?

o What did you learn from this activity?

Evaluating the Activity: Informal assessment could be conducted using the abovequestions and observation of the activity. Formal assessment could be conducted usinga teacher or student designed evaluation.

Alternative Strategies: This lesson is designed to accommodate the various needs ofspecial groups. Extension opportunities are also intrinsic because the design of theactivity allows for student input and flexibility.

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52


TobaccoKing or Curse?Kate Greer Fischer

Introduction: Recently a profusion of articles has appeared in the media about the possibleharmful effects on tobacco. Yet, in Kentucky it is a major cash crop. This lesson traces thegrowth, marketing, and manufacturing of tobacco and explores its probable health hazards.


Time Required: 1 week

Themes/Key Ideas: Place, human-environment interaction, region

Vocabulary: burley, suckering, stripping, auction, agriculture, climate

Objectives:

Students will learn about tobacco from its cultivation through manufacturing.

Students will use geographic sources of information and data for a specific purpose.

Students will analyze geographic characteristics to explain human and regionalrelationships.

Students will evaluate the influence of geographical factors in real-life decisions.

Students will learn about the probable health problems resulting from the use oftobacco.

Skills:

Students will realize that certain physical and economic conditions are needed to raiseand market an agricultural product.

Students will observe (through research) the human and physical characteristics ofplaces.

Students will translate tabular and graphic information to verbal form.

Materials and References (see "Further Readings and References Cited" section and appropriatemaps included):

Kleber, The Kentucky Encyclopedia.

County outline map for mapping tobacco grown in Kentucky counties.

Most recent statistics showing burley tobacco production by county (included).

Encyclopedias, periodicals, Louisville Courier-Journal (e.g., see "Life Without Tobacco, 19June 1994), Lexington Herald-Leader, other state newspapers, and other informationsources.

53

6



Introducing the activity: Through research students will investigate tobacco production,its effects on the Kentucky economy and on human health.

Executing the activity: Divide the class into groups of 4-5 students to investigate thefollowing categories in the production and distribution of tobacco as well as its effectson people's health. Encourage them to use visuals as much as possible (i.e., pictures,graphs, maps, samples):

a Growing conditions: historical background, rainfall, soil, growing season, farmsize, yield

El Human labor: planting, setting, cultivating, suckering and spraying, cutting,curing, stripping

a Marketing and auctioning: income, market location, season

a Manufacturing: processes, products, plants, employment, income generated

o Health hazards

Following completion of research, each group will present its findings to the class.Using the data on burley tobacco estimates (Table 4), students will make a choroplethmap. Distribute newspaper articles such as "Life Without Tobacco" for students toread. After students have read the article, discuss what effects a ban on tobacco wouldhave on Kentucky. Be sure to point out both positive and negative consequences.

Concluding the activity: Ask students to write essays in which they make suggestions asto what crops tobacco farmers could raise to replace income lost from tobacco'sdecline.

Evaluating the activity: Students should establish a rubric and critique the groupreports; teacher evaluation of map accuracy; teacher designed evaluation for gradingessays.

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Table 4: Burley Tobacco County Estimates, 1991District

andCounty

AcresHarv.

YialeHarv.Acre

Production :

(Pounds)

Ballard 1,450 2,130 3,087,000Calloway 290 1,890 548,000

Carlisle 250 2,150 537,000

Graves 450 1,935 871,000

Hickman 27 1,630 44,000

Lyon 240 2,030 487,000

McCracken 543 2,330 1,266,000

Marshall 240 1,945 467,000

Trigg 900 1,700 1,532,000

Other Counties 10 1,800 18,000

DISTRICT 1 4,400 2,013 8,857,000

Caldwell 560 1,890 1,057,000

Christian 3,250 2,110 6,850,000

Crittenden 23 1,825 42,000

Daviess 3,230 2,275 7,351,000

Hancock 1,200 1,990 2,389,000Henderson 400 1,875 750,000

Hopkins 200 1,660 332,000Logan 1,720 2,115 3,640,000McLean 720 2,085 1,501,000

Muhlenberg 485 1,895 918,000Ohio 1,250 2,055 2,571,000Simpson 1,075 2,235 2,404,000

Todd 1,310 2,185 2,864,000Union 7 2,000 14,000Webster 170 1,980 337,000DISTRICT 2 15,600 2,117 33,020,000

Adair 2,400 2,070 4,965,000

Allen 1,800 2,165 3,896,000Barren 5,650 2 ' 13,112,000Breckinridge 3,910 2,030 7,928,000Bullitt 690 2,105 1,454,000

Butler 400 1,985 794,000

Casey 3,560 1,885 6,710,000Clinton 1,290 1,875 2,417,000Cumberland 1,420 1,915 2,717,000Edmonson 980 1,955 1,914,000Grayson 2,180 2,000 4,356,000Green 3,110 2,100 6,532,000Hardin 2,270 2,190 4,968,000Hart 4,720 2,045 9,653,000Jefferson 240 2,165 519,000Larue 1,600 2,320 3,708,000Marion 2,900 2,185 6,330,000Meade 880 2,170 1,908,000Metcalfe 2,760 2,200 6,074,000Monroe 1,800 2,395 4,312,000Nelson 2,300 2,060 4,740,000Russell 2,040 1,945 3,963,000Taylor 2,710 2,110 5,720,000Warren 2,990 2,125 6,357,000DISTRICT 3 54,600 2,107 115,047,000

Boone 1,510 2,390 3,609,000Bracken 3,210 2,465 7,909,000Campbell 330 2,445 807,000Carroll 2,020 2,235 4,510,000Gallatin 1,100 2,350 2,587,000Grant 2,860 2,420 6,925,000Henry 4,710 2,370 11,158,000Kenton 700 2,165 1,515,000Oldham 680 2,350 1,598,000Owen 4,030 2,220 8,938,000Pendleton 2,500 2,370 5,923,000Trimble 2,050 2,260 4,634,000DISTRICT 4 25,700 2,339 60,113,000

1/Preliminary.

Districtand

County

AcresHarv.

YieldHarv.Acre

Production

(Pounds)

Anderson 1,640 2,060 3,380,000

Bath 3,510 2,040 7,164,000

Bourbon 5,570 2,155 12,003,000

Boyle 2,130 2,215 4,722,000

Clark 3,500 2,125 7,442,000

Fayette 4,920 2,255 11,085,000

Fleming 3,800 1,855 7,052,000

Franklin 2,560 2,195 5,616,000

Garrard 3,660 2,095 7,674,000

Harrison 4,470 2,270 10,151,000

Jessamine 3,000 2,245 6,742,000

Lincoln 3,290 2,165 7,126,000

Madison 5,060 2,215 11,203,000

Mason 4,730 2,230 10,542,000

Mercer 3,000 2,195 6,589,000

Montgomery 3,490 2,105 7,339,000Nicholas 2,780 2,155 5,985,000

Robertson 1.300 2,120 2,756,000Scott 4,560 2,105 9,598,000Shelby 5,400 2,385 12,878,000

Spencer 2,000 2,210 4,420,000

Washington 3,050 2,230 6,804,000Woodford 4,580 2,385 10,916,000DISTRICT 5 82,000 2,185 179,187,000

Boyd 30 2,000 60,000

Breathitt 700 1,875 1,311,000Carter 1,990 2,040 4,057,000

Clay 1,500 1,900 2,848,000Elliott 1,410 1,945 2,741,000

Estill 800 1,865 1,490,000Greenup 1,100 2,050 2,257,000Jackson 1,610 1,965 3,165,000Johnson 390 1,855 723,000

Knox 485 2,065 1,001,000Laurel 2,300 1,945 4,472,000Lawrence 392 2,010 787,000

Lee 390 1,740 679,000Leslie 30 1,900 57,000Lewis 2,860 2,165 6,195,000McCreary 50 1.520 76,000Magoffin 1,000 1,835 1,837,000Menifee 850 1,970 1,674,000Morgan 2,350 2,030 4,770,000Owsley 950 1,675 1,781,000Ferry 29 1,860 54,000Powell 500 1,930 966,000Pulaski 3,510 2,070 7,262,000Rockcastle 1,580 2,095 3,313,000Rowan 940 2,150 2,020,000Wayne 1,450 2,255 3,270,000Whitley 345 2,010 693,000Wolfe 1,150 1,870 2,149,000Other Counties 9 2,000 18,000DISTRICT 6 30,700 2,011 61,726,000

STATE TOTAL 213,000 2,150 457,950,000

Top Counties in Yield (Lbs)Bracken 2,465Campbell 2,445Grant 2,420Monroe 2,395Boone 2,390

Source: Kentucky, Agricultural Statistics Service, 1993, p. 24.

55

BEST COPY AVAILABLE 67


Studying Land Use through City DirectoriesKate Greer Fischer(adapted from a lesson by Bridget Strickler of the Kentucky Alliance Institute, 1993)

Introduction: This lesson requires students to examine maps and data of designated blocks ofthe downtown area of Lexington. They will discover drastic changes in land use of the cityand could apply the same techniques to their own communities.


Time Required: 1-2 hours

Themes/Key Ideas: Location, place, human-environment interaction, movement, region

Vocabulary: absolute and relative location, Central Business District (CBD), Central OfficeDistrict, central place, planning, site and situation, time-space, centrifugal and centripetalforces

Objectives:

Students will look at spatial change over time and space using geographic skills andresources.

Students will evaluate the influence of geographic factors on real-life issues by using aCity Directory.

Skills:

Acquiring data about people's geographic activities and the human and physicalcharacteristics of places.

Preparing maps using area and point data.

Preparing well-constructed interpretive oral and written reports to accompany maps,graphics, and other geographical data.

Materials:

Large drawing paper

Rulers

Index cards, each with a schematic drawing and addresses of present businesses alongone block of a central downtown Lexington street.

City Directories for different decades (for Lexington the following could be used:Polk's Lexington Street and Avenue Guide 1965; 1975 Lexington City Directory; Polk 1992Lexington Kentucky City Directory)

Markers

Map of downtown Lexington (see Fig. 7)

56

68


The Learning Activity.Background: The different city directories (for 1965, 1975, and 1992 in this activity) aregood sources of information to illustrate changes in the makeup of the CBD. Theblocks could just as easily have been those in another city or neighborhood. Theseyears were selected because of changes that occurred within Fayette County that haveaffected the downtown area.

Introduction: Like most cities in the United States, Lexington's CBD has changeddrastically in the last 30 years. Until the 1960s it was a thriving commercial hub.Because of its relative location (within a 15 to 30 minute walk from the University ofKentucky), students frequented both the retail stores and movie theaters. In 1967, thefirst shopping mall (Turf land) was built in Fayette County, and this was followed byother shopping centers. As people began to shop at malls closer to home and with easyparking, attempts were made in the 1980s to lure shoppers back to the downtown areathrough construction of Rupp Arena, hotels, office buildings, and through redesigningand renovation of existing buildings into a galleria (Festival Market Place). Buildingswere demolished and replaced by new and larger ones. By examining data, studentsmay draw conclusions as to how land use changed and the reasons for that change.

Executing the activity:

Divide class into collaborative learning groups of 4-5 students.

Provide each group with one of the pre-prepared index cards.

Have groups investigate the historic land use of the addresses listed on their cardby using City Directories from two different decades.

Direct students to draw maps of the same side of the block for three decades.Note: They do not have to list every attorney or store in each building. They couldlist "attorneys" and "specialty stores." Students should also note if a buildingshows a large number of vacancies, or if it has been demolished.

Direct students to draw a fourth map and predict what the block will look like in2010.

Students should develop a theory explaining why the land use has or has notchanged and why it will look as they have represented it in 2010.

Concluding the activity: The entire class should discuss the changes in the CBD anddebate as to whether the correct term should be COD (Central Office District). Directstudents to write essays on the Future of Downtown Lexington and strategies thatmight be used to revitalize downtown Lexington. Encourage them to include maps,depictions of future urban landscapes, future city skylines.

Evaluating the activity: Teacher or student designed evaluation to assess theculminating essay.

69


Black Settlement Patterns in the BluegrassKate Greer Fischer

Introduction: This learning activity is about the settlement patterns of African-Americansbefore and after the Civil War. It is based on three articles written by Karl Raitz, Peter Smith,and John Kellogg (see "Further Readings and References Cited" section; the journals areavailable in libraries or articles tan be obtained by writing Professor Karl Raitz, Departmentof Geography, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506).


Time Required: 1 to 2 periods


Vocabulary: absolute and relative location, accesibiliiy: scale, ethnicity, segregation,neighborhood, settlement, lanct use, immigration, migraiion, transportation, agriculture,enclave, spatial interaction

Objectives:

Students interpret events using an historical perspective.

Students use geographic sources of information and data.

Students analyze relationships among people, places, and events using geographicskills and resources.

Students evaluate the effects of geographic factors on real-life issues.

Skills:

Students will be able to identify distance and direction information from maps.

Students will prepare well-constructed interpretive oral and written reports toaccompany maps, graphics, Lind other geographical data.

Students will interpret maps, including point, line, and area spatial patterns and willcompare spatial patterns in order to propose relationships.

Materials and References (see "Further Readings and References Cited" section and appropriatemaps included):

Various maps showing Negro enclaves and settlement patterns and statistics on Negrosettlement from the articles by Kellogg (1977), Kellogg (1982), and Smith and Raitz(1974).

Map of highways in Bluegrass area (Fig. 4).

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The Learning Activity:Background: This lesson requires students to examine two different types of settlementpatterns by African-Americans in the Bluegrass area, urban and rural. Students willthen make some observations about movement and settlement patterns.

Introduction: If one examined a demographic breakdown showing housing patterns ofthe Bluegrass area, a conclusion might be that the region is similar to other such areasin the southeastern United States. Most people assume that African-Americans inhabitpoorer areas of the inner city. If the situation is examined more carefully, it will befound that this is only partially true in the Bluegrass. There are numerousAfrican-American enclaves found in areas adjacent to cities like Lexington andLouisville.

John Kellogg has written two articles (1977, 1982) on black residential patterns withinthe city of Lexington. One of the articles compares Lexington with Atlanta. Hisfindings show that before the Civil War, many blacks could be found living in alleysbehind the mansions of their owners who occupied the choice lots along Main Street,Broadway, and Limestone. Other choice areas included Maxwell, High, Second, andShort Streets. There were also settlements of free blacks, who had purchased theirfreedom because of their trade skills. They lived near railroad tracks, cemeteries,bottom lands, or on the outskirts of town near newly constructed factories. After theCivil War, many blacks tried to migrate to the cities in search of employment. Eventhough there was a need for labor, the whites were determined to keep blackresidential concentrations small.

The article by Peter Smith and Karl Raitz (1974) on "Negro Hamlets and AgriculturalEstates in Kentucky's Inner Bluegrass" explains that rural enclaves were created afterthe Civil War by owners of estates. Many wanted to avoid paying taxes on land, so itwas subdivided and sold to the Freedman. This enabled the Freedman to have a homeand also provided the estate owner with a labor supply. These enclaves are still presenttoday, although economic conditions have changed. When the estate-owners left, blackworkers had to find employment elsewhere or subsist on their own land.

Executing the activity: Divide the class into pairs and give each a set of maps and charts.Have them answer the following questions:

0 Using the various maps of Lexington, answer the following:

I. Where are most black settlements located? (along railroad track, bottom lands, onoutskirts of town)

2. Are the patterns similar or dissimilar to those of Atlanta? (similar)

3. Which black urban clusters in Lexington are without stores within 3 miles (4.8 km)?(Adamstown, Tay lortown, Brucetown)

4. Which black urban clusters in Lexington have a school within 3 miles or 4.8kilometers? (Goodlowtown, Davis Bottom)


a Using the map showing Negro hamlets in Kentucky's Inner Bluegrass Region,answer the following:

1. Locate Keene. Before the automobile, how long would you expect it to take totravel by buggy from Keene to Lexington? (1 day)

2. How far is Keene from the county seat of Jessamine County? (6 miles or 9. 7kilometers)

3. How far is Watkinsville from the county seat of Scott County by road? (13-14miles

or 21-23 kilometers)

4. Suppose that you lived in Hall in 1870. The owner of the estate upon which youworked abandoned his estate because of high taxes. Where would the nearesttown be where you might seek employment? (Nicholasville) How far would it beas the crow flies? (7 miles or 11.2 kilometers) How far by road? (Keene is 14 miles or23 kilometers)

a Using the table "Bluegrass Negro Hamlets, by Origin and OccupationalOrientation, 1972," in Smith and Raitz (1974) answer the following:

1. Which county had the largest number of hamlets in 1972? (Fayette, 13)

2. Which hamlet had the higl -t percentage of heads-of-household employed onestates? (Dixontown)

3. Which two counties had no heads-of-households employed on estates? (Clark andMadison)

a Using the figures 'The Antebellum Bluegrass Estate" and "The ContemporaryBluegrass Estate," answer the following:

1. What differences are there between the two figures? (some answers: Antebellumestates raised hemp used for rope and cloth. Burley is grown today, rather than darktobacco. No wheat today. Slave quarters were in the center of the antebellum estate;Negro hamlet is located on outskirts of today's estate. No dairy operations today. Hayand clover are grown today. Owners do not use a garden today. The horse operation ismuch more elaborate today. Roads have been built today. There is no smokehouse today.Today, cattle are raised for beef and not milk.)

a Have students examine road maps of Kentucky today to determine how mucheasier it would be to travel from one of the rural enclaves to the county seat.Speculate on the kinds of job opportunities that might be present today.

Concluding the activity: Ask students to write an essay on the following: I believe thatlife would have been more difficult for African-Americans who lived in urban (orrural) areas in the Post Civil War period for the following reasons...

Evaluating the activity: Teacher or student designed evaluations.

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The Horse Industry in KentuckyKate Greer Fischer

Introduction: When one hears the word Kentucky, chances are that one or more of thefollowing images come to mind: tobacco, bourbon, Mammoth Cave, or race horses. Thislesson is on the horse industry.


Time Required: 2-3 days


Vocabulary: absolute and relative location, agriculture, culture, climate, weather,primogeniture, cultural baggage

Objectives:

Students will explain the influence of geographic factors on human movement.

Students will analyze geographic characteristics to explain human and regionalrelationships.

Students will evaluate the influence of geographic factors on real-life issues.

Materials:

Information cards (as shown following this section)

Blank film strip sections

Markers

Film strip projector (preferably old type)

Scotch tape to tape sections together


Introducing the activity: By using the information cards (or through research), studentswill generate filmstrips to present to the class on the horse industry in Kentucky.


o Divide class into groups of 4 students.

o Distribute information cards to each group (or assign research on each topic).

o Distribute filmstrip sections and markers.

o Students will draw and color their filmstrips and be prepared to present theirsegment to the rest of the class.

CI Each group will make up two questions regarding their segment that can beanswered briefly.

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Concluding the activity: In addition to the student-generated quiz, the film itself is theconcluding activity.

Evaluating the activity: Student critiques of presentations.

Information Cards: Each card should have one of the following topics:

TYPES OF HORSES IN KENTUCKY(supplement this with information or pictures of each horse type)

- Arabians- Hunters and jumpers

- Quarter horses

- Standard bred (harness racing)

- Tennessee Walking Horses

- Thoroughbreds

FACTS ABOUT THE THOROUGHBRED INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY

- Kentucky produces between 8,000-9,000 of the nation's 49,000 foalsannually.

- The industry employs more than 79,000 people in the state.

- The thoroughbred industry generates more than $1.3 billion in wagesand salaries (4.5 percent) of the total in the state.

- In the phone book, the Lexington Yellow Pages contains five pages ofhorse-related businesses (farms, horse brokers, horse transportationcompanies or van manufacturing firms, saddle makers, veterinarians).

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HISTORICAL DATA

- American beginnings In Virginia and Maryland In the 1730s.

- Migrations into Bluegrass in 1780s by second sons (primogeniture); gentrybrought their fine horses and taste for racing with them (culturalbaggage).

- Civil War took Its toll on the horse industry; the horses were used bycavalries of both sides.

- Revived quickly after Civil War, There were 17 race tracks.

- After the Civil War, blacks dominated the horse Industry as trainers andJockeys.

ENVIRONMENTAL CIRCUMSTANCES FAVORABLE TO HORSES

- Deep, phosphate-rich Ordovician limestone created fertile soils goodfor lush grass growth.

- Long growing season (grass nine months of year).

- Mild winters and not extremely hot summers: will not endangernew-born foals; training can continue practically year round.

- Seasonal movement of racing (starts in Florida and Louisiana in winter,moves to Arkansas In March, Keene land by April, Louisville by May,Baltimore in late May/June, then New York, moves back to Kentucky InOctober and In November back to Florida and Louisiana for the winter).

COSTS OF RACE HORSE INDUSTRY

- Farm land may cost $10,000 per acre.

- Horse barns may cost $500,000 (includes sprinkler system, floors thatdrain well).

- Breeding stock$100,000 per animal or more.

- Breeding feesup to $100,000, or more.

- Insurance, feed, employees cost tens of thousands of dollars per horsefarm.

- FencesS10,000 per mile (or 1.609 km).

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On the Road Again...Kate Greer Fischer

Introduction: The Toyota Motor Manufacturing Company, located in Scott County, is thelargest Japanese automobile plant in the United States. It has drastically changed the area,creating 5,200 jobs a year. It is one of four automobile or truck plants in the state. Two Fordplants are in Louisville and the Corvette plant is in Bowling Green.

Grade Level: Grades 4-12 depending on which activities are used and how they are used.

Time Required: 2-5 hours

Themes/Key Ideas: Location, place, human-environment interaction, movement

Vocabulary: scale, commute, shipping costs, point of entry, suppliers, accessibility, absoluteand relative locations, distribution, network, spatial interaction, trade, transportation,infrastructure, multiplier effect

Objectives:Students will learn that the manufacture of an automobile has become a global process.

Students will become aware of the widespread effects of the Toyota plant on Kentucky.

Students will learn to analyze and evaluate geographic considerations in makingdecisions.Students will learn a variety of ways to identify absolute and relative location.

Students will examine the interaction between people and their environment andpr &ict trends.Students will analyze relationships among people, places, and events using geographicskills and resources.

Skills:

Students work with distance, scale, and map symbolization.

Students demonstrate how humans interact within and between the state, nation, andworld.Students prepare graphs including title and source of data and labeling categories.

Materials:Maps (Figs. 4 and 11)

Graphs (Fig. 5) and tables (Tables 1 and 2)

Outline maps of Kentucky

Markers or colored pencils

U.S. road atlas

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Background: The automobile industry has been of great economic importance toKentucky, creating thousands of jobs and generating much money through themultiplier effect. Not only have the automobile assembly plants themselves createdjobs on the site, they have also stimulated other jobs for people who work for thesuppliers of these companies. Forty Toyota suppliers are located in Kentucky; of these,nine are owned by Japanese; seven are jointly-owned U.S.-Japanese companies.


Divide class into pairs of students. Distribute outline maps of Kentucky and havestudents locate major cities. Ask students if they know where the Ford MotorCompany truck plant, the Corvette plant, and Toyota plant are located. Have themlocate Louisville, Bowling Green, and Georgetown respectively.

Give students the maps showing Toyota suppliers and highways Have studentsdetermine the best routes to ship these goods to Georgetown based on distance(they will have to use scale).

Give students various charts showing population growth. Ask if there is aconnection between locating an automobile plant and the population growth ofcounties and cities. Have students graph the data showing population growth.Have them determine the routes that workers would take to get to the plant fromthe various nearby towns.

Assign students the task of visiting a car dealer. Tell them to read the sticker todetermine: where the car was assembled, what the shipping costs were, the pointof entry (if a foreign car). Using a U.S. road atlas, have them determine the bestroute of this vehicle to their town.

Discuss with the class the possible reasons Toyota located in Georgetown (e.g.,near a state university, state government incentives like the $100 million offeredby the state, lower property taxes, proximity to larger cities like Cincinnati andLouisville, large market, proximity to major highways and railroad tracks, lowerlabor costs).

Concluding the activity: Brainstorm the positive and negative effects of Toyota on ScottCounty, Georgetown, and Kentucky. For example, positive effects include the $180million payroll and provision of 20 percent of the tax revenues in Scott County. Anegative effect includes the increased stress on infrastructure such as highways,schools, and sewers. Ask students to write an essay on the following topic: Assumethat a Japanese business or company wanted to locate a major automobile assemblyplant in your community. What changes would occur in your area? Include good andbad changes. What incentives might your community offer to lure the company? Whatare the reasons the company might or might not consider your community? Why don'tcommunities create their own businesses instead of trying to recruit business fromforeign companies?

Culminating activity: In groups of two or three, have students make a proposal oradvertisement to convince the Japanese to locate in their community.

Evaluating the activity: Student critiques of the culminating activity.

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Further Reading and References Cited

Alvey, R. Gerald. Kentucky Bluegrass Country. Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi,1992.

Bladen, Wilford A. A Geography of Kentucky: A Topical-Reg;.;--ial Overview. Dubuque, Iowa:Kendall/Hunt, 1984.

Clark, Thomas D. Kentucky: rand of Contrast. New York: Harper and Row, 1968.

Davis, Darrell Haug. The Geography of the Blue Grass Region. Frankfort: Kentucky GeologicalSociety, 1927.

Dicken, Peter. Global Shift: The Internationalization of Economic Activity. New York: GuilfordPress, 1990, 2d edition.

Fox, John, Jr. The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1903.

Haywood, Charles F. The Economic Significance of Toyota Motor Manufacturing, U.S.A., Inc., inKentucky. Lexington, Ky.: Center for Business and Economic Research, University ofKentucky, 1992.

Karan, P. P. ed. Kentucky: A Regional Geography. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1973.

Kellogg, John, "The Formation of Black Residential Areas in Lexington, Kentucky, 1865-1887,"The Journal of Southern History. 48 (February, 1982): 21-52.

Kellogg, John, "Negro Urban Clusters in the Postbellum South," The geographical Review. 67, No.3 (July, 1977): 310-321.

Kentucky, Agricultural Statistics Service. 1991-1992 Kentucky Agricultural Statistics. Louisville:Kentucky Agricultural Statistics Service, September, 1992.

Kentucky, Cabinet for Economic Development. 1993 Kentucky Deskbook of Economic Statistics.Frankfort, Ky.: Division of Research and Planning, 1993.

Kleber, John E. ed. The Kentucky Encyclopedia. Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky,1992.

Lancaster, Clay. Vestiges of the Venerable City: A Chronicle of Lexington, Kentucky. Lexington:Lexington-Fayette County Historic Commission, 1978.

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Murray-Wooley, Carolyn and Karl Raitz. Rock Fences of the Bluegrass. Lexington, Ky.: TheUniversity Press of Kentucky, 1992.

O'Dell, Gary, "Urban Development in a Karst Region: Lexington, Kentucky," The Kentucky Caver.22, No. 3 (1988): 10-16.

O'Dell, Gary, "Water Supply and the Early Development of Lexington, Kentucky," Filson ClubHistory Quarterly. 67, No. 4 (1993): 431-461.

Raitz, Karl B. The Kentucky Bluegrass: A Regional Profile and Guide. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Dept. ofGeography, University of North Carolina, Studies in Geography No. 14,1980.

Smith, Peter C. and Karl B. Raitz, "Negro Hamlets and Agricultural Estates in Kentucky's InnerBluegrass," The Geographical Review. 64, No. 2 (April, 1974): 217-234.

Wade, Richard C. The Urban Frontier. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959.

Ware, William S. A Literary History of Kentucky. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988.

Wright, John D. Lexington, Heart of the Bluegrass. Lexington: Lexington-Fayette County HistoricCommission, 1982.

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