Winchester, Kentucky: Baker's Spring Becomes a City

Clark County was carved out of Fayette and Bourbon counties in seventeen ninety-two and named for George Rogers Clark, the Revolutionary War hero who had secured the Northwest Territory for the new nation. The following year, a town was platted and named Winchester for the town in Virginia. That cycle repeated itself across Kentucky: a soldier or settler received land, laid out a town, and christened it with a name brought from the east.

Winchester became the county seat of Clark County and has held that distinction for well over two centuries. It sits along the Lexington pike, roughly halfway between Lexington and the mountains of eastern Kentucky.