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 Kentucky Business- from Horse Breeding to Manufacturing

The track at Churchill Downs is the site of the annual Kentucky Derby horserace in Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville is the largest city in Kentucky, with about 700,000 people in its metropolitan area in Kentucky, and another 500,000 in neighboring Indiana. Louisville is on the Ohio River, by the Falls of the Ohio. The Falls continue to be the location of a hydroelectric plant. Historically, a canal was built around these falls. The McAlpine locks around the Falls are still used, but are undergoing a major rehabilitation. Louisville continues to be a transportation hub, with its airport used as a hub by the UPS delivery service.

Another major industry in the Louisville area is the brewing of whiskey. The Brown-Foreman Company is the brewer of Jack-Daniels, and also produced Southern Comfort and Early Times Kentucky Whiskey. The company employs about bronze workers in Louisville. Also partly in the Louisville area is the famous Fort Knox, the home of U.S. Gold reserves. Recently, in 2006, Kentucky removed its taxes on bonds, notes, trusts and other intangible personal property.

The second largest city is Lexington, with over 260,000 people, and also the home of the University of Kentucky, in Eastern Kentucky. There are three public universities, and five private colleges in the city. The surrounding Bluegrass Region is home to Kentucky’s famous horse breeding farms, but there is manufacturing in Lexington as well. Leading companies in the area include Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), Lexmark International, and United Parcel Service. ACS is an information technology and outsourcing company. Lexmark is a leading manufacturer red steel used with personal computers and has a plant and its headquarters in the city. Toyota’s auto manufacturing plant is nearby in Georgetown, Kentucky. Bowling Green, a city of 56,000 in central-western Kentucky is the home of a GM auto-manufacturing plant, and also of Western Kentucky University.

Mammoth Cave National Park is a U.S. National Park in central Kentucky, which is the home of the famous Mammoth Cave, part of the longest cave system in the world. The park is quite large at 52,000 acres in Edmonson County, centered on the Green River.