Lexington

Lexington, consolidated with Fayette County, is the second-largest city in Kentucky and the 61st largest in the United States. Known as the "Horse Capital of the World", it is the heart of the state's Bluegrass region. With a mayor-alderman form of government, it is one of two cities in Kentucky designated by the state as first-class; the other is the state's largest city of Louisville. In the 2015 U.S. Census Estimate, the city's population was 314,488, anchoring a metropolitan area of 489,435 people and a combined statistical area of 708,677 people.

Lexington ranks tenth among US cities in college education rate, with 39.5% of residents having at least a bachelor's degree. It is the location of the Kentucky Horse Park, The Red Mile and Keeneland race courses, Rupp Arena, the world's largest basketball-specific arena, Transylvania University, the University of Kentucky and Bluegrass Community & Technical College.

History

This area of fertile soil and abundant wildlife was long occupied by varying tribes of Native Americans. European explorers began to trade with them but settlers did not come in force until the late 18th century.

Lexington was founded by European Americans in June 1775, in what was then considered Fincastle County, Virginia, 17 years before Kentucky became a state. A party of frontiersmen, led by William McConnell, camped on the Middle Fork of Elkhorn Creek (now known as Town Branch and rerouted under Vine Street) at the site of the present-day McConnell Springs. Upon hearing of the colonists' victory in the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, they named their campsite Lexington. It was the first of what would be many American places to be named after the Massachusetts town. The risk of Indian attacks delayed permanent settlement for four years.

In 1779, during the American Revolutionary War, Col. Robert Patterson and 25 companions came from Fort Harrod and erected a blockhouse. They built cabins and a stockade, establishing a settlement known as Bryan Station. In 1780, Lexington was made the seat of Virginia's newly organized Fayette County. Colonists defended it against a British and allied Shawnee attack in 1782, during the last part of the American Revolutionary War.

The town was chartered on May 6, 1782, by an act of the Virginia General Assembly. The First African Baptist Church was founded c. 1790 by Peter Durrett, a Baptist preacher and slave held by Joseph Craig. Durrett helped guide "The Traveling Church", a group migration of several hundred pioneers led by the preacher Lewis Craig and Captain William Ellis from Orange County, Virginia to Kentucky in 1781. It is the oldest black Baptist congregation in Kentucky and the third oldest in the United States.

In 1806, Lexington was a rising city of the vast territory to the west of the Appalachian Mountains; poet Josiah Espy described it in the following letter:

Lexington is the largest and most wealthy town in Kentucky, or indeed west of the Allegheny Mountains; the main street of Lexington has all the appearance of Market Street in Philadelphia on a busy day ... I would suppose it contains about five hundred dwelling houses [it was closer to three hundred], many of them elegant and three stories high. About thirty brick buildings were then raising, and I have little doubt but that in a few years it will rival, not only in wealth, but in population, the most populous inland town of the United States ... The country around Lexington for many miles in every direction, is equal in beauty and fertility to anything the imagination can paint and is already in a high state of cultivation.

Residents have fondly continued to refer to Lexington as "The Athens of the West" since Espy's poem dedicated to the city.

In the early 19th century, planter John Wesley Hunt became the first millionaire west of the Alleghenies. The growing town was devastated by a cholera epidemic in 1833, which had spread throughout the waterways of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys: 500 of 7,000 Lexington residents died within two months, including nearly one-third of the congregation of Christ Church Episcopal. London Ferrill, second preacher of First African Baptist, was one of three clergy who stayed in the city to serve the suffering victims. Additional cholera outbreaks occurred in 1848–49 and the early 1850s. Cholera was spread by people using contaminated water supplies, but its transmission was not understood in those years. Often the wealthier people would flee town for outlying areas to try to avoid the spread of disease.

Planters held slaves for use as field hands, laborers, artisans, and domestic servants. In the city, slaves worked primarily as domestic servants and artisans, although they also worked with merchants, shippers, and in a wide variety of trades. Plantations raised commodity crops of tobacco and hemp, and thoroughbred horse breeding and racing became established in this part of the state. In 1850, one-fifth of the state's population were slaves, and Lexington had the highest concentration of slaves in the entire state. It also had a significant population of free blacks, who were usually of mixed race. By 1850, First African Baptist Church, led by London Ferrill, a free black from Virginia, had a congregation of 1,820 persons, the largest of any, black or white, in the entire state.

Many of 19th-century America's leading political and military figures spent part of their lives in the city, including U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate President Jefferson Davis (who attended Transylvania University in 1823 and 1824); Confederate general John Hunt Morgan; U.S. Senator and Vice President John C. Breckinridge; and Speaker of the House, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State Henry Clay, who had a plantation nearby. Lincoln's wife Mary Todd Lincoln was born and raised in Lexington, and the couple visited the city several times after their marriage in 1842.

During the 19th century, migrants moved from central Kentucky to Tennessee and Missouri. They established their traditional crops and livestock in Middle Tennessee and an area of Missouri along the Missouri River. While Kentucky stayed in the Union during the American Civil War, the residents of different regions of the state had divided loyalties.

20th century to present

In 1935 during the Great Depression, the Addiction Research Center (ARC) was created as a small research unit at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington. Founded as one of the first drug rehabilitation clinics in the nation, the ARC was affiliated with a Federal prison. Expanded as the first alcohol and drug rehabilitation hospital in the United States, it was known as "Narco" of Lexington. The hospital was later converted to operate as part of the federal prison system; it is known as the Federal Medical Center, Lexington and serves a variety of health needs for prisoners.

Lexington has continued as the center of thoroughbred horse breeding and racing in Kentucky, with major racing and sales facilities, as well as a museum of horses and the sport.

Geography

Lexington, which includes all Fayette County, consists of 285.5 square miles (739.4 km2), mostly gently rolling plateau, in the center of the inner Bluegrass Region. The area is noted for its fertile soil, excellent pastureland, and horse and stock farms. Poa pratensis (bluegrass) thrives on the limestone beneath the soil's surface, playing a major role in the development of champion horses; it is associated with the area's beauty of landscape. Numerous small creeks rise and flow into the Kentucky River.

The Lexington-Fayette Metro area includes five counties: Clark, Jessamine, Bourbon, Woodford, and Scott. This is the second-largest metro area in Kentucky after that of Louisville. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 285.5 square miles (739 km2). 284.5 square miles (737 km2) of it is land and 1.0 square mile (2.6 km2) of it (0.35%) is water.

Planning

Lexington must manage a rapidly growing population while working to maintain the character of the surrounding horse farms that give the region its identity. In 1958 Lexington enacted the nation's first Urban Growth Boundary, restricting new development to an Urban Service Area. It set a strict minimum area requirement, currently 40 acres (160,000 m2), to maintain open space for landholdings in the Rural Service Area. In 1967, the Urban Service Area was decreased in area; various zoning regulations were also amended from the original 1958 issue. Several years later, in 1973, the first Lexington Comprehensive Plan was completed.

In 1980, the Comprehensive Plan was updated: the Urban Service Area was modified to include Urban Activity Centers and Rural Activity Centers. The Urban Activity Centers were commercial and light-industrial districts in urbanized areas, while Rural Activity Centers were retail trade and light-industrial centers clustered around the Interstate 64/Interstate 75 interchanges. In 1996, the Urban Service Area was expanded when 5,300 acres (21 km2) of the Rural Service Area was acquired through the Expansion Area Master Plan. This was controversial: this first major update to the Comprehensive Plan in over a decade was accompanied by arguments among residents about the future of Lexington and the thoroughbred farms.

The Expansion Area Master Plan included new concepts of impact fees, assessment districts, neighborhood design concepts, design overlays, mandatory greenways, major roadway improvements, stormwater management, and open space mitigation for the first time. It also included a draft of the Rural Land Management Plan, which included large-lot zoning and traffic impact controls. A pre-zoning of the entire expansion area was refuted in the Plan. A 50-acre (200,000 m2) minimum proposal was defeated. Discussion of this proposal appeared to stimulate the development of numerous 10-acre (40,000 m2) subdivisions in the Rural Service Areas.

Three years after the expansion was initiated, the Rural Service Area Land Management Plan was adopted, which increased the minimum lot size in the agricultural rural zones to 40-acre (160,000 m2) minimums. In 2000, a Purchase of Development Rights plan was adopted, granting the city the power to purchase the development rights of existing farms; in 2001, $40 million was allocated to the plan from a $25 million local, $15 million state grant. An Infill and Redevelopment study was also initiated during that time, along with design guidelines for the areas surrounding the new Fayette County courthouses.

Culture

Annual cultural events and fairs

Lexington is home to many thriving arts organizations including a professional orchestra, two ballet companies, professional theatre, several museums, several choral organizations, and a highly respected opera program at the University of Kentucky. In addition, several annual events and fairs draw people as attendees from throughout the Bluegrass region.

Mayfest Arts Fair is a free outdoor festival that takes place annually over Mother's Day weekend. Held in Gratz Park between the Carnegie Center and Transylvania University, the festival typically features up to 100 art and craft booths, live entertainment throughout the weekend, food, children's activities, adult activities and literary events, free carriage rides, a traditional Morris and Maypole dance and various demonstrations.

June has two popular music festivals: bluegrass and Broadway. The Festival of the Bluegrass, Kentucky's oldest bluegrass music festival, is in early June; it includes three stages for music and a "bluegrass music camp" for school children. For more than two decades, during the 2nd and 3rd weekends, UK Opera Theatre presents a Broadway medley "It's A Grand Night for Singing!"

Later in June, the Gay and Lesbian Services Organization hosts the Lexington Pride Festival, which celebrates pride in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities and welcomes allies. The festival offers live music, crafts, food, and informational booths from diverse service organizations. Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, elected in 2010 and openly gay, proclaimed June 29, 2013 as Pride Day. Lexington has one of the highest concentrations of gay and lesbian couples in the United States for a city its size.

Area residents gather downtown for the Fourth of July festivities which extend for several days. On July 3, the Gratz Park Historic District is transformed into an outdoor music hall when the Patriotic Music Concert is held on the steps of Morrison Hall at Transylvania University. The Lexington Singers and the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra perform at this event. On the Fourth, events include a reading of the Declaration of Independence on the steps of the Old Courthouse, a waiters' race in Phoenix Park, a parade, a country music concert, street vendors for wares and food, and fireworks. The Fourth of July may be the biggest holiday in Lexington.

The Woodland Arts Fair, almost four decades old, is held in mid-August by The Lexington Art League. It features many local and national artists working in a variety of media; vendors also sell refreshments.

Since the turn of the 21st century, Festival Latino de Lexington, the biggest fiesta in September, has been the city's main event to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. During the festival, thousands of people, Hispanics and non-Hispanics alike, gather in downtown Lexington to enjoy the cultural displays, dancing presentations, live music, and a variety of food from different regions of Latin America.

Also in September, the Roots & Heritage Festival includes art exhibits, literary readings, film presentations, the Festival Ball and the ever-popular two-day street festival featuring live musical performances from internationally renowned artists.

"Southern Lights: Spectacular Sights on Holiday Nights", taking place from November 18 to December 31, is held at the Kentucky Horse Park. It includes a three-mile (5 km) drive through the park, showcasing numerous displays, many in character with the horse industry and history of Lexington. The "Mini-Train Express", an indoor petting zoo featuring exotic animals, the International Museum of the Horse, an exhibit showcasing the Bluegrass Railway Club's model train, and Santa Claus are other major highlights.

In 2002, Lexington became the first city to launch a "Thriller video" reenactment as a Halloween festivity. The video's storyline and dance sequences are faithfully recreated in a parade beginning outside the historic Kentucky Theatre. The hundreds of zombies faithfully rehearse at the nearby Mecca Live Studio in the weeks leading up to the parade.

The Lexington Christmas Parade is held usually the day after Thanksgiving. The parade route follows Main Street between Midland and Broadway. Festivities include a Holiday Market with over 25 arts and craft vendors, a stage with entertainment, food, and the annual tree lighting ceremony, which occur in Triangle Park.

Other events and fairs include:

• The Artists Market: A small display of arts and craft booths which is set up concurrently with the Farmer's Market each Saturday from the first weekend in June through the last weekend in August. Located in Cheapside Park adjacent to the Lexington Farmer's Market.
• Thursday Night Live: An annual summer series of free, public concerts held in Cheapside Park every Thursday evening from 4:30pm – 7:30pm in from May – October.
• A Midsummer Night's Run: A 5K race in early August.
• The North Limestone (NoLi) Night Market
• The Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra presents several annual concerts.
• The Kentucky Women Writers Conference, which has hosted dozens of the nations foremost women writers.
• Gallery Hop: a seasonal event where the city's art galleries are open to the public on the third Friday of February, April, June, September and November.
• Beaux Arts Ball: A masquerade ball hosted by students of the University of Kentucky's College of Design (formerly College of Architecture).
• Tournament of Champions: One of three national high school debate championship tournaments featuring policy debate and Lincoln-Douglas debate. The best teams in the nation meet after qualifying during the regular season on the first weekend in May annually, hosted by the University of Kentucky Debate Team.

Historical structures and museums

Lexington is home to numerous museums and historical structures. One of the most famous is Ashland: The Henry Clay Estate along Richmond Road east of downtown. This two-story museum is a National Historic Landmark and was the former home of statesman Henry Clay.

Since the late 20th century, Lexington has demolished hundreds of historic structures to make way for hotels, banks and parking structures. The Lexington Public Library was constructed where the historic Phoenix Hotel once stood. An historic 1880s block located on Main Street was demolished. This lot is still vacant.

The Pope Villa, built in 1811, is one of the best surviving domestic designs by the architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe. It is being restored by the Bluegrass Trust for Historic Preservation, which also maintains and administers the Hunt-Morgan House.

Additional historic sites are the following:

• Aviation Museum of Kentucky
• First African Baptist Church
• The Headley-Whitney Museum
• Hunt-Morgan House
• Kentucky Theatre
• Lexington Cemetery
• Martin Castle Also known as Castle Post
• Mary Todd Lincoln House
• Old Morrison, on the Transylvania University campus
• Rupp Arena
• Waveland State Historic Site

The University of Kentucky Art Museum is the premier art museum for Lexington and the only accredited museum in the region. Its collection of over 4000 objects ranges from Old Masters to Contemporary. It regularly hosts special exhibitions.

The world's largest ceiling clock and a five-story Foucault pendulum are located inside the Lexington Public Library on East Main St. The Central Library is also home to an art gallery and the 138-seat Farish Theater. The city library has five branches located throughout the city: Beaumont (off Harrodsburg Rd.), Eagle Creek (off Richmond Rd.), Northside (Russell Cave Rd.), Tates Creek (off Tates Creek Rd.), and Village (Versailles Rd.). Lexington Public Library offers a variety of programs and services to the citizens of Fayette County and circulates 3,000,000 items per year.

The local Woolworth's building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its significance as a site of civil rights protests against segregation during the 1960s. Activists conducted sit-ins to gain integrated lunch service, full access to facilities, and more employment. The building was demolished by its owner in 2004 and the area paved for use as a parking lot until further development.

Parks and outdoor attractions

City parks and facilities

Lexington has over 100 parks ranging in size from the 8,719-square-foot (810.0 m2) Smith Street Park to the 659-acre (2.7 km2) Masterson Station Park. Among those parks are:

• six public golf courses at Avon, Kearney Links, Lakeside, Meadowbrook, Tates Creek and Picadome
• four dog parks at Jacobson, Masterson Station, Coldstream, and Wellington.
• three public 18-hole disc golf courses at Shillito Park, Jacobson Park, and at Veterans Park
• a public skate park at Woodland Park, featuring 12,000 square feet (1,100 m2) of "ramps, platforms, bowls, and pipes".

For the Kentucky Horse Park, see Sporting Events below.

Natural areas

The city is home to Raven Run Nature Sanctuary, a 734-acre (3.0 km2) nature preserve along the Kentucky River Palisades. There are 11 miles (18 km) of back-country hiking trails that range from wheelchair-accessible paved trails to difficult single-track trails. It is common to run across hopeful Appalachian Trail backpackers. The city has recently purchased land adjacent to the park which will make Raven Run the largest park in the city. Raven Run is home to over 56 species of trees, 600 species of plants, 200 species of birds, and other wildlife. Remains of a grist mill, homestead and limekiln remain. The preserve also has a nature center and various educational programs throughout the year. Such programs include seasonal wildflower walks, stargazing during the warmer months, evening insect tours, and historical walks and presentations.

The Arboretum is a 100-acre (0.40 km2) preserve adjacent to the University of Kentucky. It features the Arboretum Woods, a small, 16-acre (65,000 m2) Bluegrass Woodland patch that is home to eighteen native Kentucky tree species, and more than 50 native Kentucky grasses and herbs. It also has 1,500 varieties of roses in the Rose Garden, a Home Demonstration Garden, and numerous paved paths and trails.

The city also plays host to the historic McConnell Springs, a 26-acre (110,000 m2) park within the industrial confines off of Old Frankfort Pike. There are two miles (3 km) of trails that surround the namesake springs, historic dry-laid stone fences, and historical structures.

Transportation

Air

Blue Grass Airport is Lexington's primary commercial airport. It provides approximately 13 nonstop flights and a total of 86 flights daily from its two runways. Five major airlines operate connection service at Blue Grass, including Allegiant Air, American Eagle, Delta Air Lines, United Express, and US Airways Express.

On August 27, 2006, Comair Flight 5191 took off from the wrong runway, and crashed in a nearby field, killing 49 of the 50 passengers, leaving the first officer alive but badly burned. The aircraft involved was a 50-seat Bombardier Canadair Regional Jet CRJ-100ER, serial number 7472. On August 27, 2011, a memorial sculpture depicting 47 steel birds flying was unveiled and dedicated to the victims.

The airport is located four miles (six km) west of the city center, at the intersection of US 60 (Versailles Road) and Man o' War Boulevard.

In addition to commercial airline service, the airport is also home to several private (general aviation) operators including TACAir, which serves as the airport's FBO (Fixed-Base Operator). Flight training and aircraft maintenance services are also offered. A brand new general aviation runway was dedicated August 4, 2010.

Public transportation

Lexington is served by Lextran, a public transit bus agency operated by LFUCG and has been in existence since 1972. Lextran (officially the Transit Authority of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government) is a public transportation bus system serving Lexington, Kentucky. It runs bus routes throughout the city which mostly all converge in downtown at the Lexington Transit Center located at 220 East Vine. It provides public transportation in the form of buses and lift vans. It operates seven days a week on a total of 24 bus routes from 5:00 a.m. until 12:30 a.m. In addition to mainline and paratransit, Lextran contracts with the University of Kentucky and operates two routes around the campus. It also runs two routes to the Bluegrass Community and Technical College campuses. Even though Lexington and Fayette County are a consolidated government, Lextran does not provide service outside the Lexington city proper due to limited funding sources.

Transportation planning

The Lexington Area Metropolitan Planning Organization is responsible for transportation planning for Fayette and Jessamine Counties. This includes activities such as carpool matching, administering a commuter vanpool program, air quality forecasting, bicycle and pedestrian planning, congestion management, and developing transportation plans and documents.