Boyd County, Kentucky

Information about Boyd County, Kentucky

Boyd County, Kentucky
Map
Enlarge picture
Map of Kentucky highlighting Boyd County

Location in the state of Kentucky
Enlarge picture
Map of the USA highlighting Kentucky

Kentucky's location in the USA
Statistics
Founded1860
SeatCatlettsburg
Largest CityAshland
Area
 - Total
 - Land
 - Water
162 sq mi (419 km)
160 sq mi (415 km)
2 sq mi (4 km), 1.02%
Population
 - (2000)
 - Density
49,752
311/sq mi (120/km)
Time zoneEastern: UTC-5/-4
Website: www.boydcountyky.com
Named for: Linn Boyd, United States Congressman (1835–1837; 1839–1855) and Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky (1859)
County motto: "Where Coal Meets Iron"


Boyd County is located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. It was formed in 1860. Its 160 square miles are found at the northeastern edge of the state the near the Ohio River and Big Sandy River, nestled in the verdant rolling hills of Appalachia. The county seat is Catlettsburg. Its largest municipality is the city of Ashland.

As of 2000, the county population was 49,752. Boyd County is a part of the Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH, Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). As of the 2000 census, the MSA had a population of 288,649. 6.

History

Enlarge picture
A view heading westbound on Interstate 64 entering the state of Boyd County, Kentucky from West Virginia.


Boyd County was the 107th of 120 counties formed in the state of Kentucky. The county was established in 1860 from parts of surrounding Greenup, Carter, and Lawrence counties. It was named for Linn Boyd of Paducah, former U.S. congressman, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, who died in 1859 soon after being elected lieutenant governor of Kentucky.

The earliest evidence of human habitation in Boyd County exists in the forms of numerous earthen mounds containing human skeletons and burial goods giving evidence that prehistoric Native Americans inhabited the area. A 1973 archeological find revealed a serpent-shaped mound built of rocks dating to 2000 B.C. and stretching for nine hundred feet along a ridge parallel to the Big Sandy River south of Catlettsburg.

One of the early settlers in what is now Boyd County was Charles ("One-handed Charley") Smith, from Virginia. A veteran of the French and Indian War who had served under Col. George Washington in 1754, Smith received for that service roughly four hundred acres around Chadwicks Creek, where he built a cabin in 1774. Smith died in 1776 and in 1797 this land passed to Alexander Catlett for whom the town of Catlettsburg is named.

The Poage family arrived from Staunton, Virginia, in October 1799 and formed Poage’s Landing, later renamed the city of Ashland.

Industry

Members of the Poage family built the steam-powered Clinton iron furnace in 1832, the earliest industry in present-day Boyd County. A total of twenty-nine charcoal-fueled iron furnaces operated on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, seven of them in present-day Boyd County.

The Kentucky Iron, Coal and Manufacturing Company was incorporated on March 8 1854, and it laid out the town of Ashland, then within Greenup County. The company purchased thousands of acres of coal, timber, and ore lands throughout the county. It invested US$210,000 in bonds of the Lexington & Big Sandy River Railroad Company, with the stipulation that the eastern division of that line extend into Ashland instead of ending, as originally planned, in Catlettsburg. The early presence of the railroad in Ashland was largely responsible for this city becoming the dominant municipality of the county.

Ashland furnace was sold to American Rolling Mill Company in 1921, which developed into Armco Steel Corporation. In 1969 Armco constructed the Amanda furnace, one of the largest blast furnaces in the world. Known today as AK Steel, the industry remains a major employer in northeastern Kentucky.

Ashland Oil, Inc., at one time the largest corporation headquartered in Kentucky, was started in 1924 at Leach Station, south of Catlettsburg, by Paul G. Blazer. Best known for their Valvoline Oil products, Ashland Oil relocated to Covington, Kentucky in 1999, merged with Marathon Oil, and sold its remaining petroleum shares to Marathon in 2005, dissolving their petroleum division. The original oil refinery, located in Catlettsburg, is still in operation today and is currently owned by Marathon Oil.

Alcohol sales

Currently, the county is dry, meaning that the sale of alcohol is prohibited, but contains the wet city of Ashland, where retail alcohol sales are allowed. This makes Boyd County a moist county.[1] However, during a recent election, a measure to allow alcohol sales in dry areas by the drink in restaurants that seat over 100 people and derive over 70% of their income from food sales was passed.[2] This will make the county officially a limited county with a wet city.

Geography

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Boyd County Courthouse in Catlettsburg, Kentucky.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 419 km² (162 mi²). 415 km² (160 mi²) of it is land and 4 km² (2 mi²) of it (1.02%) is water.

Adjacent counties

Education

Colleges

Ashland Community and Technical College, in Ashland, is one of 16 two-year, open-admissions colleges of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. Morehead State University also has a satellite campus located in Ashland.

Public school districts

Private schools

  • Holy Family. Holy Family is affiliated with the Holy Family Catholic Church and currently offers K-8 education.
  • Rose Hill Christian. Rose Hill is affiliated with the Rose Hill Baptist Church and offers K-12.

Other schools

Demographics

Historical populations
Census Pop.%
18708,573
—
188012,1650%
189014,0330%
190018,8340%
191023,4440%
192029,2810%
193043,8490%
194045,9380%
195049,9490%
196052,1630%
197052,3760%
198055,5130%
199051,1500%
200049,7520%
[1]


As of the census² of 2000, there were 49,752 people, 20,010 households, and 14,107 families residing in the county. The population density was 120/km² (311/mi²). There were 21,976 housing units at an average density of 53/km² (137/mi²). The racial makeup of the county was 95.97% White, 2.55% Black or African American, 0.16% Native American, 0.30% Asian, 0.14% from other races, and 0.88% from two or more races. 1.12% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 20,010 households out of which 28.90% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 55.70% were married couples living together, 11.60% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29.50% were non-families. 26.50% of all households were made up of individuals and 12.20% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.38 and the average family size was 2.86.

The age distribution was 21.80% under the age of 18, 8.30% from 18 to 24, 28.70% from 25 to 44, 25.60% from 45 to 64, and 15.60% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females there were 96.00 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.10 males.

The median income for a household in the county was $32,749, and the median income for a family was $41,125. Males had a median income of $35,728 versus $22,591 for females. The per capita income for the county was $18,212. About 11.50% of families and 15.50% of the population were below the poverty line, including 22.40% of those under age 18 and 12.10% of those age 65 or over.

Communities

Cities

Census Designated Places

Unincorporated Communites

Notes and references

1. ^ Wet & Dry Counties in Kentucky (PDF). Kentucky Office of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Retrieved on March 21, 2007.
2. ^ All precincts but one vote yes (HTML). Ashland Independent. Retrieved on May 23, 2007.

External links

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Commonwealth of Kentucky
Frankfort (capital)
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Coordinates:
Commonwealth of Kentucky

Flag of Kentucky Seal
Nickname(s): Bluegrass State
Motto(s): United we stand, divided we fall

Official language(s) English[1]

Capital Frankfort

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Motto
"In God We Trust"   (since 1956)
"E Pluribus Unum"   ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
Anthem
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18th century - 19th century - 20th century
1830s  1840s  1850s  - 1860s -  1870s  1880s  1890s
1857 1858 1859 - 1860 - 1861 1862 1863

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Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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A county seat is a term for an administrative center for a county, primarily used in the United States. In the Northeast United States, the statutory term often is shire town, but colloquially county seat is the term in use there.
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City of Catlettsburg, Kentucky
The Boyd County Courthouse in Catlettsburg
Location in the state of Kentucky
Coordinates:
Country United States
State Kentucky
County Boyd
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Ashland
Downtown Ashland, Kentucky

Seal
Motto: A proud past. A bright future.
Location of Ashland, Kentucky
Coordinates:
Country United States
State Kentucky
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Area is a physical quantity expressing the size of a part of a surface. The term Surface area is the summation of the areas of the exposed sides of an object.

Units

Units for measuring surface area include:
square metre = SI derived unit

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square mile is an imperial and US unit of area equal the area of a square of one statute mile. It should not be confused with the archaic miles square, which refers to the number of miles on each side squared.
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Square kilometre (U.S. spelling: square kilometer), symbol km², is a decimal multiple of the SI unit of surface area, the square metre, one of the SI derived units. 1 km² is equal to:
  • 1,000,000 m²
  • 100 ha (hectare)
Conversely:
  • 1 m² = 0.

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population is the collection of people or organisms of a particular species living in a given geographic area or mortality, and migration, though the field encompasses many dimensions of population change including the family (marriage and divorce), public health, work and the
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The Twenty-Second United States Census, known as Census 2000 and conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States on April 1, 2000, to be 281,421,906, an increase of 13.2% over the 248,709,873 persons enumerated during the 1990 Census.
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Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume. It is frequently applied to living organisms, humans in particular.

Biological population densities


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time zone is a region of the Earth that has adopted the same standard time, usually referred to as the local time. Most adjacent time zones are exactly one hour apart, and by convention compute their local time as an offset from UTC (see also Greenwich Mean Time).
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Eastern Time Zone (ET) of the Western Hemisphere falls mostly along the east coast of Northern America and the west coast of South America. Its time offset is UTC-5 during standard time and UTC-4 during daylight saving time.
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Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is a high-precision atomic time standard. UTC has uniform seconds defined by International Atomic Time (TAI), with leap seconds announced at irregular intervals to compensate for the earth's slowing rotation and other discrepancies.
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Daylight saving time (DST; also summer time in British English) is the convention of advancing clocks so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less.
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Linn Boyd (November 22, 1800–December 17, 1859) was a prominent U.S. politician of the 1840s and 1850s, and served as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1851 to 1855.
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United States House of Representatives

Type Bicameral

Speaker of the House of Representatives
House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, (D)
since January 4, 2007
Steny Hoyer, (D)
since January 4, 2007
House Minority Leader John Boehner, (R)
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The office of lieutenant governor of Kentucky has existed under the last three of Kentucky's four constitutions, beginning in 1797. The lieutenant governor serves as governor of Kentucky under circumstances similar to the vice president of the United States assuming the powers of
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Congress
Senate
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Commonwealth of Kentucky

Flag of Kentucky Seal
Nickname(s): Bluegrass State
Motto(s): United we stand, divided we fall

Official language(s) English[1]

Capital Frankfort

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Ohio River (Oyo)

The widest point on the Ohio River is just west of downtown Louisville, where it is one mile wide


Country | United States
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The Big Sandy River may refer to one of the following rivers in the United States:
  • The Big Sandy River (Ohio River), on the border between Kentucky and West Virginia
  • The Big Sandy River (Tennessee), a tributary of the Tennessee River

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Appalachia is a term used to describe a region in the eastern United States that stretches from southern New York state to northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. Although parts of the Appalachian Mountains extend through Maine into Canada, New England is usually excluded from
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City of Catlettsburg, Kentucky
The Boyd County Courthouse in Catlettsburg
Location in the state of Kentucky
Coordinates:
Country United States
State Kentucky
County Boyd
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Ashland
Downtown Ashland, Kentucky

Seal
Motto: A proud past. A bright future.
Location of Ashland, Kentucky
Coordinates:
Country United States
State Kentucky
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The Huntington-Ashland metropolitan area is an United States metropolitan area that includes 5 counties in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. As of the 2000 census, the MSA had a population of 288,649.
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geographic coordinate system enables every location on the earth to be specified by the three coordinates of a spherical coordinate system aligned with the spin axis of the Earth.
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Greenup County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. It was formed in 1804. As of 2000, the population was 36,891. Its county seat is Greenup6. The county is named in honor of Christopher Greenup.
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Carter County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. It was formed in 1838. As of 2000, the population was 26,889. Its county seat is Grayson, Kentucky6. The county is named for Colonel William Grayson Carter.
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