Louisville

Louisville, the largest city of Kentucky, a port of entry and capital of Jefferson county, is situated on the Ohio, 130 miles below Cincinnati. The river here forms a series of rapids—the 'Falls of the Ohio'—descending 22 feet in 2 miles; except at high-water steamboats pass these by a canal. The city, which covers about 20 sq. m., is handsomely built, with wide and regular streets, on a level plain, and sloping up from the river. It has a Roman Catholic cathedral and 150 other churches, a law school, four medical colleges, colleges of dentistry and of pharmacy, a school of pharmacy for women, and a good system of public schools. Here also is the state institution for the blind; altogether there are some forty public and private charitable institutions. Louisville is the greatest market for tobacco in the world, and has large pork-packing establishments, distilleries, and tanneries. Extensive manufactures of ploughs, furniture, castings, gas and water pipes, machinery, flour, and cement are also carried on. The city is the terminus of a number of railway lines; the Ohio is crossed here by two railway bridges, one of them nearly a mile long. Louisville was founded in 1778, and in 1780 named in honour of Louis XVI. of France, whose troops were then assisting the Americans in the war of independence. A great part of the town was destroyed by a cyclone in March 1890. Pop. (1880) 123,758; (1890) 161,105.