Louisville is one of the largest commercial and industrial cen tres of the South. It is the seat of a branch of the Federal Re serve Bank, a Federal Land Bank and an Intermediate Farm Loan bank. Bank debits to individual accounts in 1936 amounted to $1,901,879. The output of the manufacturing establishments within the city in 1935 was valued at $277,983,724, and there are important plants just outside the corporate limits. The lead ing industries are the manufacture of smoking and chewing to bacco, snuff, cigars and cigarettes; slaughtering and meat-pack ing; construction and repair of railroad cars and equipment; manufacture of sanitary plumbing supplies and petroleum re fining. The distilling industry, which formerly vied with tobacco for first place, is resuming its former importance since the repeal of prohibition. Thus of the Kentucky production, which jumped from 32,338,392 gallons in 1934 to 90,345,257 gallons in 1936, half is estimated as coming from the region of Louisville. By producing 11,603,000,000 cigarettes in 1936, the city totalled 8.2% of the entire United States output. As the foremost live stock market of the South, Louisville received 709,892 head in 1936. The revival of the distillery industry was a leading factor in mak ing Louisville the only city to increase the value of its 1935 output over 1929. Retail business in the city jumped from $100,702,000 in 1935 to $115,600,000 in 1936, while building expenditures for the first six months of 1937 were over two million dollars.
History.—The site of Louisville was probably visited by La Salle in 1669 or 1670. In July, 1773, Captain Thomas Bullitt, acting under a commission from the College of William and Mary, surveyed a tract of 2,000ac. opposite the Falls of the Ohio, and laid out a town site. Though the county surveyor refused to ap prove this survey, Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia, con veyed it, in Dec. 1773, to his friend, Dr. John Connolly. There may have been a settlement on Corn Island (which has now practically disappeared) at the Falls of the Ohio, as early as 1775.
In May 1778, Gen. George Rogers Clark, on his way to the Illinois country, landed on this island and built blockhouses for his stores and cabins for some of the colonists who had come with him. Most of these settlers moved to the mainland the follow ing winter and established themselves in a fort within the present limits of Louisville. They organized a town government in April, 1779; and on May 14, 1780, the legisla ture of Virginia, on their petition, declared that Dr. Connolly had forfeited his title (he had been actively pro-British during the Revolution) and in corporated the settlement under the name of Louisville, in recog nition of the assistance given by Louis XVI. of France to the colonies in the Revolutionary War. In 1828 the town was char tered as a city; in 1851 it received a second charter; in 1870, a third ; and in 1893, a fourth, under which it still operates. The city's growth was greatly stimulated by the introduction of suc cessful steam navigation on the Ohio in 181r, and by the construc tion (1825-3o) of the canal around the Falls of the Ohio. The first railway reached it in 1851. In 1922 an area (1 I,000ac.) was annexed to the city. On Aug. 6, 1855 ("Bloody Monday") a riot incited by members of the Know Nothing Party resulted in the loss of several lives and considerable damage to property. In March, 189o, a tornado caused great loss of life and property. The city suffered severely during the record Ohio floods of January 1937. Gen. Clark lived in the city after 1779. It was the home of the actress Mary Anderson in her early years, and of J. J. Audubon from 1808 to 1812. Louis Philippe of France, during his American exile, lived for a time a few miles from the city. Five miles east are the homestead and the tomb of Zachary Taylor. At Camp Zachary Taylor, two miles distant, 75,00o men were trained during the World War.