Six distinctive Indian cultures inhabited the region now known as Kentucky. The earliest nomadic hunters occupied the land for several thousand years, and were followed by the seminomadic Woodland and Adena cultures (1000 BC–AD 1000). Remains of the Mississippian and Fort Ancient peoples (AD 1000–1650) indicate that they were farmers and hunters who often dwelled in stockaded villages, subsisting on plentiful game and fish supplemented by crops of beans, corn, and squash.
No Indian nations resided in central and eastern Kentucky when these areas were first explored by British-American surveyors Thomas Walker and Christopher Gist in 1750 and 1751. The dominant Shawnee and Cherokee tribes utilized the region as a hunting ground, returning to homes in the neighboring territories of Ohio and Tennessee. Early descriptions of Kentucky generated considerable excitement about the fertile land and abundant wildlife. The elimination of French influence after the French and Indian War intensified pressures to open the region to American settlement—pressures that were initially thwarted by Britain's Proclamation of 1763, barring such western migration until Native American interests could be protected. This artificial barrier proved impossible to maintain, however, and the first permanent white settlement in Kentucky was finally established at Harrodstown (now Harrodsburg) in 1774 by a group of settlers from Virginia and Pennsylvania.
The most ambitious settlement scheme involved the Transylvania Land Company, a creation of North Carolina speculator Richard Henderson, assisted by the famed woodsman Daniel Boone. Henderson purchased a huge tract of land in central Kentucky from the Cherokee and established Fort Boonesborough. The first political meeting by whites in Kentucky, held at Fort Boonesborough on 23 May 1775, provided for rule by the Transylvania proprietors and a representative assembly. Henderson then sought approval for creation of a 14th colony, but the plan was blocked by Virginians determined to claim Kentucky as a possession of the Old Dominion. On 1 December 1776, the new state of Virginia incorporated its new County of Kentucky.
Kentucky's image soon changed from "western Eden" to "dark and bloody ground," as it became the scene of frequent clashes between Ohio-based Indians and the growing number of white settlements dotting the central Bluegrass region. Nevertheless, immigrants continued to come westward, down the Ohio River and through the Cumberland Gap. Kentucky became the principal conduit for migration into the Mississippi Valley. By the late 1780s, settlements were gaining in population, wealth, and maturity, and it was obvious that Kentucky could not long remain under the proprietorship of distant Virginia. Virginia yielded permission for the drafting of a Kentucky state constitution, and in June 1792, Kentucky entered the Union as the 15th state.
Over the next several decades, Kentucky prospered because of its diverse agricultural and processing industries. Although there were 225,483 slaves in the state in 1860, Kentucky was spared the evils of one-crop plantation agriculture. Nevertheless, its economy was tightly linked to the lower South's, a tie facilitated by the completion in 1829 of a canal around the Ohio River falls at Louisville. Hemp was one such connection; the plant was the principal source of rope and bagging used to bind cotton bales. Kentucky was also a major supplier of hogs, mules, workhorses, prepared meats, salt, flour, and corn for the plantation markets of the South. The state became a center for breeding and racing fine thoroughbred horses, an industry that thrives today on Bluegrass horse farms as virtually the state symbol. More important was the growing and processing of tobacco, an enterprise accounting for half the agricultural income of Kentucky farmers by 1860. Finally, whiskey began to be produced in vast quantities by the 1820s, culminating in the standardization of a fine, aged amberred brew known throughout the world as bourbon, after Bourbon County.
Despite this economic development, several social and cultural problems disturbed the state. Much of the agricultural productivity came from farms employing slave labor, while the less affluent majority of white families often dwelled on less fertile upland farms. Efforts were repeatedly made to consider the slavery question. Leaders such as Henry Clay, Reverend Robert J. Breckinridge, and the fiery antislavery advocate Cassius Marcellus Clay urged an end to the "peculiar institution." Because of racial phobias and hostility to "Yankee meddling," the appeal was rejected. During the Civil War, Kentuckians were forced to choose sides between the Union, led in the north by Kentucky native Abraham Lincoln, and the Confederacy, led in the South by Kentucky native Jefferson Davis.
Although the state legislature finally opted for the Union side, approximately 30,000 men went south to Confederate service, while up to 100,000—including nearly 24,000 black soldiers—served in the Union army. For four years the state was torn with conflict over the collapse of slavery and wracked with guerrilla warfare and partisan feuds. Vigilantism and abuse of black people continued into the turbulent Reconstruction period, until legislative changes in the early 1870s began to restrain Ku Klux Klan violence and bring increased civil rights to black people.
The decades to 1900 saw other progress. Aided by liberal tax exemptions, railroad construction increased threefold, and development of timber and coal reserves began in eastern Kentucky. Industrial employment and productivity increased by more than 200%, drawing rural folk into the growing cities of Louisville and Lexington. In 1900, Kentucky ranked 1st among southern states in per capita income.
An economic and political crisis was developing, however, that would send shock waves across the state. Farmers, especially western Kentucky "dark leaf" tobacco farmers, were feeling the brunt of a prolonged price depression. The major national farm protest movements—the Grange, the Farmers' Alliance, and the Populist Party—all found support here, for by 1900 a third of all Kentucky farmers were landless tenants, and the size of the average family farm had fallen below 10 acres (40 hectares). Calls for currency inflation, reform of corporate monopolies, and improved rights for industrial workers reached a climax in the gubernatorial election of 1899. Republican William S. Taylor narrowly defeated the more reform-minded Democrat William Goebel and was sworn into office. Democrats, claiming electoral fraud, instituted a recount. On 30 January 1900, Goebel, a state senator, was shot while approaching the capitol; as he lingered near death, the legislature, controlled by Democrats, declared him governor. Goebel died immediately thereafter, and his lieutenant governor, J. C. W. Beckham, was administered the oath of office. Further bloodshed was averted, the courts upheld the Goebel-Beckham election, and "Governor" Taylor fled the state.
Goebel's assassination weighed heavily, however. The state was polarized, outside investment plummeted, and Kentucky fell into a prolonged economic and moral depression. By 1940, the state ranked last among the 48 states in per capita income and was burdened by an image of clan feuding and homicide, poverty, and provincial courthouse politics. The Great Depression hit the state hard, though an end to Prohibition revived the dormant whiskey industry.
Kentucky changed greatly after World War II. Between 1945 and 1980, the farm population decreased by 76% and the number of farms by 53%. In later decades, after tobacco was revealed to be a public health hazard, many farmers turned to raising other crops. Although Kentucky remained relatively poor, positive change was evident even in rural communities—the result of better roads, education, and government programs. The state's poverty rate fell steadily over the decades, from 22.9% in 1969 to 13.5% in 1998, when it ranked as the 18th poorest state in the nation (a great improvement from earlier in the century). In 2000 Governor Paul Patton announced a $53-million plan to develop the high-tech sector of the state's economy.
In response to lawsuits by a coalition of school districts, Kentucky's supreme court ruled in 1990 that the state's public education system was unconstitutional and ordered the legislature to design a new system of school funding and administration. In response, the Kentucky Education Reform Act was passed that year and implemented over the next five years. But more questions regarding the constitutionality of school programs, or prospective programs, lay ahead. By 2000 legislators were considering a proposal that would allow the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms, alongside other historical documents. The proposal was part of a larger movement that urged officials to allow public schools to teach the role of religion in American history and culture. At the same time, many Kentuckians supported the return of prayer to schools. By 2003, federal judges had ordered the Ten Commandments be removed from school classrooms and courthouses in several Kentucky counties, ruling that the postings of the commandments had violated the separation between church and state.
The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant was a point of concern for state environmentalists in 2000. Senior Kentucky environmental officials complained that the US Department of Energy (DOE) had used security clearances to prevent state environmental inspectors from getting full access to the plant, which enriches uranium for nuclear-reactor fuel. The plant was also the site of a massive clean-up effort in 2000, as DOE officials crushed drums that once contained uranium. Critics charged that the drums had been left in the open for decades and rain water had washed radioactivity into the environment.