Shelbyville: Kentucky's Third County Seat

Shelbyville sits on the old pioneer road between Louisville and Frankfort, and it got its start the same year Kentucky became a state.

In June of seventeen ninety-two, the legislature carved Shelby County out of the western Virginia wilderness, naming it for Isaac Shelby, Kentucky's first governor, who had fought at the Battle of Kings Mountain during the Revolution. That October, when the county court held its first session, a local landowner named William Shannon agreed to deed fifty acres to the public and donate one free acre for government buildings. On that land, Shelbyville was born.

By eighteen hundred the town held two hundred and sixty-two people. Today it is best known for saddlebred horses, Shelby County became the center of the American Saddlebred industry, and the annual Shelbyville Horse Show keeps that tradition alive.