KENTON CO.
Pike St. and Madison Ave. in Covington, was earlier a buffalo trace. In 1793 the Kentucky legislature ordered the marking of a road from Frankfort to Cincinnati. Later, Campbell Co. justices of the peace ordered a road from DeCoursey’s Ferry to the Georgetown Rd. Abner Gaines established a stagecoach line between Covington and Georgetown and later built the Gaines Tavern (still standing) in present-day Walton. In 1839 the Kentucky legislature chartered the Banklick Turnpike Company in Kenton Co. to modernize and macadamize the surface, and then rechartered it in 1845, after a financial panic. From the mid-1820s, the Banklick Rd. was surpassed in local volume by a road to Lexington that led through eastern Boone Co. In 1834 the Kentucky legislature chartered the Covington and Lexington Turnpike Company (bypassing the Banklick Rd.), and the final macadamizing of this turnpike to Lexington in the early 1850s accelerated Covington’s development, as did the opening of the Covington and Lexington Railroad in 1854 and the John A. Roebling Bridge in 1867–1868. For many years, Northern Kentucky truck farmers favored sending their produce to Cincinnati markets. Similarly, in some years producers throughout Kentucky provided half the number of hogs slaughtered in Cincinnati. Businesses with ties to Cincinnati often located in Northern Kentucky as Covington grew and became a bedroom suburb of Cincinnati. Covington’s population was 743 in 1830, more than 2,000 in 1840, 9,000 in 1850, and greater than 16,000 in 1860. In 1862 Confederate soldiers advanced into Boone Co. toward the line of military fortifications constructed in Kenton Co. from Ludlow into Campbell Co. Besides discouraging the invaders, these forts and fortifications (see Civil War Fortifications) permanently marked the landscape in both counties as places in Civil War history. Union general U. S. Grant’s parents resided in Covington, and although consensus favored the Union, proSouthern sentiments in Covington and other parts of Northern Kentucky were also strong. Thereafter, Covington and most of Kenton Co. joined Kentucky in becoming bastions of strength for the Democratic Party, which had joined with emerging Progressive elements to dominate the county’s politics. However, in 2006, for the first time, the number of Republicans registered to vote in Kenton Co. exceeded the number of Democrats. Throughout the 19th century, Kenton Co. was a focal point for German and Irish settlement (see German Americans; Irish Americans). After the Civil War, the county African American population steadily grew, as freed black slaves left rural areas for cities such as Covington (see African Americans). The institutions that these ethnic groups established made the county a cosmopolitan center for its day. By 1850, ten years after its creation, Kenton Co. was the second-most-populous county in Kentucky, with 16,117 people, and Covington was the second-largest city in Kentucky, with a population of 9,408, trailing only Louisville. Kenton Co. was a major industrial center throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, known
for brewing (see Brewing Industry; Bavarian Brewing Company), brickyards, bronze and brass products (see Michaels Art Bronze Company), candy and ice cream manufacturing, dairies, distilling (see Distilleries; Walsh Distillery; New England Distillery), glassmaking (see Hemingray Glass Company), icehouses, iron and steel manufacturing (see Stewart Iron Works), locomotives (see Covington Locomotive and Manufacturing Works; Houston, Stanwood & Gamble Company), lumber, machine tools, meatpacking (see Goetta), packaging equipment (see R.A. Jones & Company Inc.), paper bags (see Duro Bag Manufacturing Company), safes and locks, textiles and cordage, tobacco products, toys, trucks, wine production (see Gibson Wine Company; Monte Casino), and X-ray equipment (see Kelley-Koett Company). In 1869 the Louisville, Cincinnati, and Lexington Railroad (LC&L) reached Covington. In 1883 the Latonia Agricultural Association established the Latonia Racecourse adjacent to the LC&L, whose passenger trains conveyed patrons to the famous racetrack. Electric streetcar ser vice was extended to the racetrack in 1893. Racing top thoroughbreds and offering substantial purses, the Latonia Racecourse achieved a status similar to that of Keeneland Race Course in Lexington and Churchill Downs in Louisville. It closed in 1939. In 1877 passenger and freight ser vice began in Kenton Co. on the Cincinnati Southern Railroad’s new tracks out of Ludlow. Later, the railroad corporation leasing the tracks established express service between Richwood Station and Cincinnati. With offers of free or discounted commuter service, the railroad enticed homebuyers to populate new subdivision developments in Erlanger and Crescent Springs. West from Covington, along the Ohio River, the Dry Creek Turnpike connected to the Anderson Ferry in Boone Co. In 1912 Kentucky established a state highway commission. At that time, Kenton Co. purchased toll roads and eliminated tollbooths in the county. As a part of the new interstate Dixie Highway (U.S. 25), the Covington and Lexington Turnpike in Kenton Co. was widened to 18 feet and modernized to two lanes of concrete. In 1921 contractors completed paving from Covington into Florence. Thereafter gas stations, a gourmet strip of restaurants, and other businesses thrived along the new Dixie Highway. Today, traveling on the Dixie Highway south from Covington in Kenton Co., one passes through Park Hills, Fort Wright, Fort Mitchell, Lakeside Park, Crestview Hills, Edgewood, Erlanger, and Elsmere, before entering Boone Co. The old Dry Creek Baptist Church in Kenton Co. still stands as a residence at the juncture of Dixie Highway and Buttermilk Pk. in Fort Mitchell, and the old Five Mile House (see Barleycorn’s Five Mile House) opposite Turkeyfoot Rd. in Lakeside Park has become a permanent restaurant. I-75, which runs through Kenton Co., was opened in 1962–1963, and in the 1970s the entire I-275 Circle Freeway was completed through Kenton Co. These expressways led to a rapid suburbanization. Villa Hills, a postwar suburb incorpo-
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rated in 1962, was typical of the population changes occurring in Kenton Co. as citizens fled Covington for the suburbs. Numbering a only few hundred residents when first incorporated, Villa Hills by 1990 had a population of 7,739. Likewise, Delta Air Lines, with its hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Boone Co., became a major employer drawing many new suburban residents when it built a $46 million terminal in 1987. In Kenton Co., as in all of the counties of Northern Kentucky historically, tobacco has been an important economic component. In 1845, 22 Covington tobacco businesses manufactured $300,000–$400,000 in products annually. And by 1880 Covington’s tobacco companies were producing 2.5 million pounds of plug and fi ne chewing tobacco. The development of white burley tobacco after 1860 led to an increase in the tobacco trade through Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky as more farmers in Northern Kentucky and the Central Bluegrass region of Kentucky began growing this variety. County extension services throughout Kentucky taught boys farming and related skills. Then in 1926, Marie Binder Rich, one of three graduates in 1916 of the Independence High School, helped start an educational extension ser vice for girls by funding home economics training at Kenton Co.’s Piner School. Truck farming has also been important in Kenton Co. Still operating south of Covington near Erlanger in Kenton Co. is the Tewes poultry farm, visible from I-75. The Kruempelmann truck farm on the Dixie Highway in Fort Mitchell operated from about 1865 until 1995. Besides delivering produce to the Pearl St. Produce Market in Cincinnati, Henry Kruempelmann, the farm’s owner, supplied the large Castellini produce operation in Cincinnati with fresh farm goods. In 1929 L. B. Wilson, who owned the Liberty Bank and several downtown theaters in Covington, started WCKY radio station, just as Covington’s population was peaking. But after World War II, Covington experienced a population decline. The town’s population was almost 30,000 in 1880, almost 43,000 in 1900, 65,000 in 1930, 60,000 in 1960, and 52,500 in 1970. At the time, a Northern Kentucky industrial park, drawing industry away from the cities to the suburbs, had opened in Boone Co. In 1976 the Florence Mall in Boone Co. opened with Sears and JCPenney as tenants, both stores having once been successful enterprises in downtown Covington (see Covington, Downtown). Locally owned Covington stores, including Eilerman & Sons, Men’s Clothiers and John R. Coppin, went out of business. The new Northern Kentucky Convention Center opened in downtown Covington in 1998, and a year later, a new federal courthouse opened nearby on W. Fifth St. The county, after opening a new high-rise building in Covington that houses its offices and the jail, in 1999 also opened its new courthouse in Covington on Madison Ave., near RiverCenter. Established in 1921 by the Benedictine Sisters of Covington, Villa Madonna College relocated to