1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Henderson

HENDERSON, a city and the county-seat of Henderson county, Kentucky, U.S.A., on the S. bank of the Ohio river, about 142 m. W.S.W. of Louisville. Pop. (1890), 8835; (1900), 10,272, of whom 4029 were negroes; (1910 census) 11,452. It is served by the Illinois Central, the Louisville & Nashville, and the Louisville, Henderson & St. Louis railways, and has direct communication by steamboat with Louisville, Evansville, Cairo, Memphis and New Orleans. Henderson is built on the high bank of the river, above the flood level; the river is spanned here by a fine steel bridge, designed by George W. G. Ferris (1859–1896), the designer of the Ferris Wheel. The city has a public park of 80 acres and a Carnegie library. It is situated in the midst of a region whose soil is said to be the best in the world for the raising of dark, heavy-fibred tobacco, and is well adapted also for the growing of fruit, wheat and Indian corn. Bituminous coal is obtained from the surrounding country. Immense quantities of stemmed tobacco are shipped from here, and the city is an important market for Indian corn. The manufactures of the city include cotton and woollen goods, hominy, meal, flour, tobacco and cigars, carriages, baskets, chairs and other furniture, bricks, ice, whisky and beer; the value of the city’s factory products in 1905 was $1,365,120. The municipality owns and operates its water works, gas plant and electric-lighting plant. Henderson, named in honour of Richard Henderson (1734–1785), was settled as early as 1784, was first known as Red Banks, was laid out as a town by Henderson’s company in 1797, was incorporated as a town in 1810, and was first chartered as a city in 1854. The city boundary lines were extended in 1905 by the annexation of Audubon and Edgewood. Henderson was for some time the home of John James Audubon, the ornithologist.