The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Frankfort

FRANKFORT, a city of Franklin co., Kentucky, capital of the county and state, situated on both banks of the Kentucky river, here 250 yards wide and spanned by two bridges, 62 m. above its mouth, and on the Louisville, Cincinnati, and Lexington railroad, 24 m. W. N. W. of Lexington, and 45 m. E. of Louisville; pop. in 1850, 3,308; in 1860, 3,702; in 1870, 5,396, of whom 2,335 were colored. It is built on a high plain lying between the river and a bluff 150 or 200 ft. high, and is regularly laid out, with neat-looking houses. The portion on the S. side is called South Frankfort. The surrounding country is remarkable for its picturesque scenery. On one of the hills which overlook the city is a handsome cemetery, in which are buried several of the governors and other state officers, and also the remains of Daniel Boone, the pioneer in the settlement of Kentucky. The state monument to those who fell in the war of 1812 and the Mexican war is of white Italian marble. The principal public buildings are the state house, built in 1825 of a light-colored marble quarried from the hills near by, with a handsome Ionic portico; a new structure known as the fire-proof public offices, adapted for the wing of a new capitol; the state institution for the training of feeble-minded children; the state penitentiary, with 650 convicts; a county court house, and a handsome public school building. The river is navigable by means of locks and dams for steamboats 40 m. above the city, and for flat boats 100 m. higher. Frankfort has an important trade in poplar, cherry, walnut, ash, and oak lumber, the logs being rafted down the river and shipped by rail to the east. There are two flouring mills, a cotton mill, six saw mills, five distilleries, three banks with an aggregate capital of $1,725,000, a tri-weekly and two weekly newspapers, and six churches. The city was laid out in 1787, and became the seat of government in 1792. It was occupied by the confederates for about a month in 1862.