Kentucky State Map

Regions of Kentucky

• Eastern Coalfield (Cumberland Plateau): the Appalachian part of the state, with narrow valleys, coal towns such as Hazard, Harlan and Pikeville, and the Daniel Boone National Forest and Red River Gorge on its western edge. Black Mountain (4,145 ft), the highest point, is in Harlan County on the Virginia line. Cumberland Gap National Historical Park marks the pass where Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee meet.
• Bluegrass Region: rolling limestone country in the north-central part of the state, known for horse farms and bourbon distilleries, with Lexington, Frankfort on the Kentucky River, Georgetown and Richmond. Louisville lies at its western edge, and Covington, Newport and Florence form Northern Kentucky, part of the Cincinnati metro area. Louisville hosts the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs each May.
• The Knobs: a horseshoe of cone-shaped hills ringing the Bluegrass, including the hills around Berea.
• Pennyroyal (Pennyrile) Plateau: a karst region of sinkholes and caves in south-central Kentucky around Bowling Green, Glasgow, Somerset and Hopkinsville. Mammoth Cave National Park protects the longest known cave system in the world.
• Western Coal Field: lowland farm and coal country along the Ohio River around Owensboro, Henderson and Madisonville.
• Jackson Purchase: the far western tip between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, with Paducah, Mayfield and Murray.

Kentucky was part of Virginia until it became the 15th state on June 1, 1792. Fort Knox, the Army post and site of the US Bullion Depository, is between Louisville and Elizabethtown.

Rivers and lakes

The Ohio River forms the entire northern border, past Ashland, Maysville, Covington, Louisville, Owensboro, Henderson and Paducah. The Big Sandy River and its Tug Fork separate Kentucky from West Virginia. In the west, dams on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers created Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley, with the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area between them.

At the far southwest, the Kentucky Bend is a small piece of Fulton County inside a loop of the Mississippi River. It can be reached by road only through Tennessee, because the river cuts it off from the rest of Kentucky and from Missouri.

Major highways

• I-64: from Louisville east through Frankfort and Lexington toward Ashland and West Virginia.
• I-65: from Louisville south through Elizabethtown and Bowling Green to Tennessee.
• I-75: from Covington south through Florence, Georgetown, Lexington, Richmond, London and Corbin to Tennessee.
• I-71: from Louisville northeast to the Cincinnati area.
• I-24: from Illinois at Paducah southeast past Hopkinsville toward Nashville.
• I-69 and I-165: upgraded parkways in western Kentucky; I-69 runs from Fulton through Mayfield and Madisonville to Henderson, and I-165 links Bowling Green with Owensboro.
• Parkways and US 23: the Bluegrass, Mountain and Hal Rogers parkways reach central and eastern Kentucky; US 23 follows the eastern edge from Ashland to Pikeville.