Owensboro, Kentucky, United States

🇺🇸 Owensboro is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of Daviess County, Kentucky, United States. It is the fourth-largest city in the state by population. Owensboro is located on U.S. Route 60 and Interstate 165 about 107 miles south-west of Louisville, and is the principal city of the Owensboro metropolitan area. The metropolitan area is the sixth largest in the state.

History Evidence of Native American settlement in the area dates back 12,000 years. Following a series of failed uprisings with British support, however, the last Shawnee were forced to vacate the area before the end of the 18th century.

The first European descendant to settle in Owensboro was frontiersman William Smeathers or Smothers in 1797, for whom the riverfront park is named. The settlement was originally known as "Yellow Banks" from the color of the land beside the Ohio River. In 1817, Yellow Banks was formally established under the name Owensborough, named after Col. Abraham Owen. In 1893, the spelling of the name was shortened to its current Owensboro.

Several distillers, mainly of bourbon whiskey, have been in and around the city of Owensboro. The major distillery still in operation is the Glenmore Distillery Company, now owned by the Sazerac Company.

On August 14, 1936, downtown Owensboro was the site of the last public hanging in the United States. A 26 year old African American man, Rainey Bethea, was convicted and sentenced for the rape and murder of 70-year-old Lischa Edwards in a very short time (only 37 days lapsed between the crime and the execution). A carnival atmosphere was in place with vendors selling hotdogs, attended by a large crowd including children and many reporters. The execution was presided over by a female sheriff, Florence Shoemaker Thompson, who gained national media attention for her role in the process, although she declined to spring the trap. Before Bethea was dead, the crowd had already begun to tear at his clothes and even his body for souvenirs. The Kentucky General Assembly quickly abolished public executions after the embarrassment this caused.

The end of the Second World War brought civil engineering projects which helped turn Owensboro from a sleepy industrial town into a modern, expanding community by the turn of the 1960s. Many of the projects were set in motion by Johnson, Depp & Quisenberry, a firm of consulting engineers then engaged in a runway redesign at the County Airport; the "Depp" in question was a member of an old and prominent Kentucky family which includes the town's most famous son, actor Johnny Depp.

Manufacturing As of 1903, Owensboro was home to several stemmeries. Pinkerton Tobacco produced Red Man chewing tobacco in Owensboro. Swedish Match continues to make Red Man in a plant outside city limits.

The Owensboro Wagon Company, established in 1884, was one of the largest and most influential wagon companies in the nation. With eight styles or sizes of wagons, the company set the standard of quality at the turn of the 20th century.

Frederick A. Ames came to Owensboro from Washington, Pennsylvania, in 1887. He started the Carriage Woodstock Company to repair horse-drawn carriages. In 1910, he began to manufacture a line of automobiles under the Ames brand name. Ames hired industrialist Vincent Bendix in 1912, and the company became the Ames Motor Car Company. Despite its product being called the "best $1500" car by a Texas car dealer, the company ceased production of its own model in 1915. The company then began manufacturing replacement bodies for the more widely sold Ford Model T. In 1922, the company remade itself and started to manufacture furniture under the name Ames Corporation. The company finally sold out to Whitehall Furniture in 1970.

The start of the Kentucky Electrical Lamp Company, a light bulb manufacturing company was in 1899; it eventually was acquired by Kentucky Radio Company (Ken-Rad) in 1918 and later acquired by General Electric in 1945 and in 1987 acquired by MPD, Inc., created the light bulbs that illuminated the first night game in the history of Major League Baseball on May 24, 1935, between the Reds and Phillies at Cincinnati's Crosley Field. The Owensboro plant was a major part of General Electric's vacuum tube manufacturing operations, producing both receiving types and military/industrial ceramic types. In 1961, engineers at the General Electric plant in Owensboro introduced a family of vacuum tubes called the Compactron.

In June 1932, John G. Barnard founded the Modern Welding Company in a small building located near the Ohio River at First and Frederica Streets where the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum sits today. Today, Modern Welding Company has nine steel tank and vessel fabrication subsidiaries located throughout the United States, and five welding supply stores located in Kentucky and Indiana. The company is the country's largest supplier of underground and above ground steel storage tanks for flammable and combustible liquids. The company celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2007.

Texas Gas Transmission Corporation was created in 1948 with the merger of Memphis Natural Gas Company and Kentucky Natural Gas Corporation and made its headquarters in Owensboro. Since that time, Texas Gas changed ownership four times. The company was bought by CSX Corp. in 1983, by Transco Energy Corp. in 1989, by Williams in 1995, and by Loews Corporation in 2003.

Geography Owensboro is located at the crook of a bend in the Ohio River, 37 miles (60 km) south-east of Evansville, Indiana.

According to the United States Census Bureau, Owensboro has a total area of 20.4 square miles (52.9 km2), of which 19.1 square miles (49.5 km2) is land and 1.3 square miles (3.4 km2), or 6.47%, is water.

Top employers According to Owensboro's 2021 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the city were: 1 Owensboro Health; 2 U.S. Bank Home Mortgage; 3 Owensboro Public Schools; 4 Toyotetsu Mid-America; 5 Sazerac Distilleries; 6 Specialty Foods Group; 7 Mizkan America Inc.; 8 City of Owensboro; 9 UniFirst; 10 Metalsa Structural Products, Inc.

Arts and culture Owensboro was named an All-American City in 2013. Owensboro placed fourth on Area Development's Top 20 Southern Cities, with a 9th place ranking for its "recession busting factors" among the Top 25 Small Cities.

Events • Owensboro is the "Barbecue Capital of the world"; it holds its International Bar-B-Q Festival and competition every second weekend in May. • Owensboro hosts "ROMP", "River of Music Party", a bluegrass music festival. ROMP has grown to 20,000 visitors a year, and won the Governor's Award for Community Arts in 2013. • Lanham Brothers Jamboree is an event held every second Saturday from April through September at the Diamond Lake Resort Theater in Owensboro. • During the summer, the city offers "Friday After 5", a free 16-week series of outdoor concerts on the downtown riverfront. • The "Owensboro PumpkinFest" is held each September at the Sportscenter/Moreland Park complex. The festival includes food vendors, crafts people, carnival rides, children and adult activities and games, and contests using pumpkins. The event was started by the Glenmary Sisters to raise awareness and funds.

Points of interest • Ben Hawes Golf Course and Park • Daviess County Public Library • Owensboro Bridge • International Bluegrass Music Museum • Largest sassafras tree (located on Frederica Street next door to the Daviess County Public Library) • Owensboro Museum of Science and History • RiverPark Center • Smothers Park • Temple Adath Israel, one of the oldest synagogue buildings still standing in the United States • Western Kentucky Botanical Garden • William H. Natcher Bridge.