Fayette County

Fayette is one of the three original counties formed by Virginia on June 30, 1780. With a land area of 280 square miles, the central Bluegrass County is bordered by Jessamine, Woodford, Scott, Bourbon, and Clark counties; the Kentucky River forms the southern boundary with Madison County. It was named for General Lafayette, who served in the Revolutionary War. The county's seat is Lexington, created by Virginia on May 5, 1782.

The topography of the uplands is gently rolling until the three-hundred-foot limestone palisades of the Kentucky River are reached. Eighty-five percent of the land area is in farms, with 64 percent of farmland in cultivation. Fayette County is the center of the nation's thoroughbred industry. Equine sales in 1989 were $389 million, which represented 75 percent of all North American sales. The county ranks first in the state in agricultural receipts, derived from horses, tobacco, nursery and greenhouse crops, hay, and corn.

Fayette County was first inhabited by prehistoric Native Americans. Burial mounds were found in the vicinity of Hickman and Elkhorn creeks. Early pioneers arrived in 1774, when Jacob Baughman settled a claim on what was later known as Boone's Creek. Hancock Taylor, James Douglas, and John Floyd surveyed in the area in 1774. A party of explorers led by William McConnell arrived in 1775 and built one of the early stations. McConnell is credited with selecting the name for the settlement, Lexington, referring to the Massachusetts town's Revolutionary War activity. The Bryant family settled their station in 1776. Other early stations were those of Levi Todd, 1779, and William McGee, 1780.

The settlers brought horses with them and racing was both an occupation and recreation. The 1789 Fayette County tax rolls listed 9,607 horses and 56 stallions. By 1791 annual three-day race meetings were held in October over the Lexington course, and in 1797 Kentucky's first Jockey Club was organized at John Postlethwaite's Tavern. When wealthy Fayette Countians were not racing their horses, they were establishing farms and businesses, building fine homes, and constructing roads. Flatboats carried corn, oats, potatoes, whiskey, and tobacco down the Kentucky, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. Many of these goods were produced by slave labor. The tax rolls in 1789 listed 2,522 slaves.

As early as 1785, farmers began importing shorthorn cattle to improve their herds. After the War of 1812, Spanish merino sheep were imported. Fairs and livestock shows were organized. The first fair was held in 1814 at Fowler's Garden near Lexington; the first cattle show at Sandersville on June 25,1815. In 1870 there were 12,260 head of cattle and 7,843 hogs over six months of age. In the early 1900s the county was the site of the major livestock auction for central Kentucky. In 1990 Blue Grass Stockyards operated two sales rings, one on Lisle Road and the other on Angliana Avenue.

By the early 1780s, Fayette Countians were converting corn, wheat, and rye into whiskey. The business thrived for well over a hundred years. Among the early distilleries were the Ashland Distillery and Henry Clay Distillery, both on the Frankfort Turnpike; Stoll, Clay and Company at Sandersville; the Silver Springs Distillery on Yarnell Pike; Headley and Peck on Harrodsburg Pike; and Robert F. Johnson on Russell Pike where "Old Fashioned Hand-made Sour Mash Fire Copper Whiskey" was made. Manufacturing firms such as General Electric began operating plants in the county in 1947 and were followed by International Business Machines in 1956 and the Trane Company, manufacturers of air conditioning equipment, in 1963. In 1990 the county had more than fifty manufacturing plants.

Hemp was introduced at an early date. Nathan Burrowes, a county resident, invented a machine for cleaning it. The soil produced fine hemp and in 1870 the county grew 4.3 million pounds. The crop declined in the 1890s because of increased demand for tobacco and competition from imported hemp from the Philippines. In 1941, when the federal government saw a possible shortage of manila rope from the Philippines, farmers were encouraged to grow hemp once again for use in World War II. The crop declined again in 1945.

Tobacco, grown since the 1780s, replaced hemp as the major money crop in 1915. The amount of burley grown in Fayette and other central Kentucky counties led to the establishment of marketing facilities, and the first loose-leaf burley tobacco sale was held on January 9, 1905. By the 1940s the loose leaf burley market, with numerous warehouses, was among the world's largest. The demand for tobacco products has decreased, but the county is still the headquarters of the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association, an auction market, and tobacco plants such as Southwestern Tobacco Company, Inc., a processing plant since 1926, and C.F. Vaughn Company, Inc., since 1963 a stemming and redrying operation.

Transportation development began in 1797, when the legislature appointed Joseph Crockett to build a turnpike. The first stage route ran from Lexington to Olympian Springs in Bath County in 1803. Among the early turnpikes was the Lexington-Maysville, chartered in 1818 for sixty-four miles. It cost $426,400 to construct the macadamized road, thirteen tollhouses, and six covered bridges. Other turnpikes included the Lexington-Danville-Lancaster (1818), covering forty-two miles; and the Lexington- Harrodsburg-Perryville (1818), also covering forty-two miles. In 1817 Col. James Johnson established a stagecoach line from Lexington to Louisville, and Abner Gaines had a stagecoach running between Lexington and Cincinnati. In 1895, Fayette County purchased the turnpikes. The state's first railroad, the Lexington & Ohio, extending from Lexington to Portland on the Ohio River, was chartered in 1830. In the 1850s, railroads connected the county both to adjoining counties and other areas of the state such as the Lexington-Big Sandy Railroad.

In 1990, the county continued to be a major transportation hub, served by two interstates (I-64 and I-75); U.S. 421, U.S. 60, U.S. 68, U.S. 27, and U.S. 25; KY 4 (New Circle Road), a four-lane beltline encircling the city; and Man O' War, a partial outer belt. Main line rail service is provided by CSX Transportation and thirty-seven inter- and intrastate common carriers.

In the early nineteenth century Fayette County became a center of culture and learning in the West. Its location and rich soil generated the wealth necessary to develop a landed aristocracy modeled after the Virginia Tidewater plantations. In 1784, Robert Boggs built a substantial stone house on the Athens-Walnut Hill Road. In 1787, Levi Todd built a twelve-room two-story brick home, Ellerslie, on the Richmond Pike. Other noteworthy early homes were Stoney Point, built in the 1790s on Parkers Mill Road; Hurricane Hall, still standing on the Georgetown Road, built before 1800 and known for its clothes presses and French wallpaper; Fairfield, John Bradford's home at the intersection of Iron Works Road and Russell Cave Pike; Winton, a brick residence built in 1823 for Samuel Meredith on Newtown Pike; Grasslands, between Walnut Hill and Jack's Creek roads, built in 1823 for Maj. Thomas Hart Shelby; and the Meadows, a sister house to Grasslands, built in the early 1830s for Dr. Elisha Warfield on Winchester Pike.

By the 1850s Italianate style had replaced the classical in home designs. Thomas Lewinski designed one of the nation's finest Italianate villas, Cane Run (later known as Glengarry), for Alexander Brand on Newtown Pike; it was completed in 1854. Five famous residences have been restored and are open to visitors: Ashland, Henry Clay's home on Richmond Road; the Mary Todd Lincoln House on West Main, the girlhood home of Abraham Lincoln's wife; the Hunt Morgan House in Gratz Park, built by John W. Hunt, Kentucky's first millionaire; Waveland, home of the Bryant family on Higbee Mill Road, and the Bodley-Bullock House in Gratz Park.

In 1988, tourism spending in the county was $372,330,211. Popular with tourists are the 1,030 acre Kentucky Horse Park on Iron Works Pike; the Red Mile, a historic standardbred track on South Broadway; Keeneland Race Course on Versailles Road; the Headley-Whitley Museum, a collection of jeweled bibelots on Old Frankfort Pike; and Raven Run Nature Sanctuary, off Old Richmond Road.

A number of federal installations are located in Fayette County. The Lexington Bluegrass Army Depot, established in 1942, covers 780 acres. The Federal Correctional Institute, on Leestown Road, is a medium-security prison with 519 inmates. The complex was built in 1934 as one of two federal narcotics hospitals in the nation and became a federal prison in 1974.

In 1974, the governments of the city of Lexington and the county of Fayette merged to form the Lexington- Fayette Urban County Government. The population of the county was 174,323 in 1970; 204,165 in 1980; 225,366 in 1990; and 260,512 in 2000.