Richmond, Kentucky

Richmond, the seat of Madison County, was established in seventeen ninety-eight on land donated by Colonel John Miller and named for Richmond, Virginia, reflecting the Virginia roots of most early Kentucky settlers. The town grew quickly into a prosperous Bluegrass market center, and Eastern Kentucky University, founded here in nineteen oh six as a normal school, became its defining institution. Richmond is also the site of the Battle of Richmond in August of eighteen sixty-two, one of the most complete Confederate victories of the Civil War, when General Kirby Smith routed a Union force and opened the road to Lexington and Frankfort. Today Richmond is home to around thirty-five thousand people, balancing a university-town energy with its deep ties to horse country and Appalachian foothills just to the east.