The Bourbon Capital of the World on the Ohio River — where Churchill Downs has run the Kentucky Derby since 1875 (the greatest two minutes in sports, held on the first Saturday in May), the Muhammad Ali Center honours the greatest fighter of the 20th century born here, 95% of the world's bourbon is produced within a 2-hour radius of Louisville, and the Louisville Slugger Museum explains why the same white ash bat has been turning in every Major League ballpark since 1884
Louisville (650,000; metro 1.4 million) is Kentucky's largest city, straddling the Falls of the Ohio on the Kentucky-Indiana border — the only natural obstruction to river navigation between the Mississippi and the Ohio's origins in Pittsburgh, which made Louisville's location as a portage point the foundation of its 19th-century commercial wealth. Louisville is the self-described capital of bourbon country: the Bourbon Trail runs through 95 distilleries in the Bluegrass State, and the city itself is home to the Urban Bourbon Trail (a self-guided bar and distillery tour through downtown). The…
Louisville was founded in 1778 by General George Rogers Clark as a base for the American Revolutionary War campaign in the Northwest Territory — the Falls of the Ohio provided both a defensible position and a natural stopping point where river boats had to unload their cargo, creating immediate commercial importance. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N, founded 1850) made Louisville the gateway city connecting the northern and southern United States during the Civil War — the city was critical to the Union supply network and remained in Union hands throughout the war despite being a sl…