Kentucky

Kentucky (US: /kənˈtʌki/ ^ⓘ, UK: /kɛn-/), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the northeast, Virginia to the east, Tennessee to the south, and Missouri to the west. Its northern border is defined by the Ohio River. Its capital is Frankfort and its most populous city is Louisville. As of 2024, the state's population was approximately 4.6 million.

Previously part of colonial Virginia, Kentucky was admitted into the Union as the fifteenth state on June 1, 1792. It is known as the "Bluegrass State" in reference to Kentucky bluegrass, a species of grass introduced by European settlers, which has long supported the state's thoroughbred horse industry.

The fertile soil in the central and western parts of the state led to the development of large tobacco plantations similar to those in Virginia and North Carolina, which utilized enslaved labor prior to the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Kentucky ranks fifth nationally in goat farming, eighth in beef cattle production, and fourteenth in corn production. While Kentucky has been a long-standing center for the tobacco industry, its economy has diversified into non-agricultural sectors including auto manufacturing, energy production, and medicine. Kentucky ranks fourth among US states in the number of automobiles and trucks assembled. It is one of several states considered part of the Upland South.

The state is home to the world's longest known cave system in Mammoth Cave National Park, the greatest length of navigable waterways and streams in the contiguous United States, and the nation's two largest artificial lakes east of the Mississippi River. Cultural aspects of Kentucky include horse racing, bourbon, moonshine, coal mining, My Old Kentucky Home State Park, automobile manufacturing, tobacco, Southern cuisine, barbecue, bluegrass music, college basketball, Louisville Slugger baseball bats, and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Prior to 1769, Botetourt County and successor counties in the Colony of Virginia, whose geographical extent was south of the Ohio and Allegheny Rivers beyond the Appalachian Mountains, became known to European Americans as Kentucky (or Kentucke) country. It was named for the Kentucky River, a tributary of the Ohio.

The precise etymology of the name is uncertain. One theory sees the word based on an Iroquoian name meaning "(on) the meadow" or "(on) the prairie" (cf. Mohawk kenhtà:ke, Seneca gëdá'geh (phonemic /kɛ̃taʔkɛh/), "at the field"). Another theory suggests a derivation from the term Kenta Aki, which could have come from an Algonquian language, in particular from Shawnee. Folk etymology translates this as "Land of Our Fathers". The closest approximation in another Algonquian language, Ojibwe, translates as "Land of Our In-Laws", thus making a fairer English translation "The Land of Those Who Became Our Fathers". In any case, the word aki means "land" in most Algonquian languages.

The first archaeological evidence of human occupation of Kentucky is approximately 9500 BCE, and it was Clovis culture, primitive hunter-gatherers with stone tools. Around 1800 BCE, a gradual transition began from a hunter-gatherer economy to agriculturalism. Around 900 CE, a Mississippian culture took root in western and central Kentucky and a Fort Ancient culture appeared in eastern Kentucky. While the two had many similarities, the distinctive ceremonial earthwork mounds constructed in the former's centers were not part of the culture of the latter. Fort Ancient settlements depended largely on corn, beans, and squash, and practiced a system of agriculture that prevented ecological degradation by rotating crops, burning sections of forest to create ideal habitat for wild game, relocating villages every 10–30 years, and continually shifting the location of fields to maintain plots of land in various stages of ecological succession.

In about the 10th century, the Kentucky native people's variety of corn became highly productive, supplanting the Eastern Agricultural Complex and replacing it with maize-based agriculture in the Mississippian era. As of the 16th century, what became Kentucky was home to tribes from diverse linguistic groups. The Kispoko, an Algonquian-speaking tribe, controlled much of the interior of the state.