Florence, Kentucky

Florence, Kentucky had four names before it stuck with the fifth. The crossroads at the junction of the Burlington and Cincinnati roads went by Crossroads, then Polecat, then Maddensville, then Connersville, where a post office opened in eighteen twenty-eight. The post office was changed to avoid confusion with another Kentucky Connersville, and on January twenty-seventh, eighteen thirty, the Kentucky General Assembly incorporated the town as Florence, with a population of about sixty people.

Today Florence is the largest city in Boone County, but it is known far beyond its borders for something painted on a water tower in nineteen seventy-four. Mall developers donated the land for a new tower and stipulated the words Florence Mall be painted on it. State highway officials ruled the sign illegally advertised a business that did not yet exist.

Rather than repaint it entirely, someone changed Mall to Y'all. The tower still reads Florence Y'all, seen by millions of interstate drivers every year.