Kentucky Land for Sale

Two things the Commonwealth of Kentucky is most famous for are thoroughbred horses and fine sipping bourbon. But Kentucky has left its mark on American culture in other ways too. It’s the birth state of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. It’s where the cheeseburger was invented, as well what’s arguably the tastiest of all fast foods, Kentucky Fried Chicken. It’s where the ubiquitous “Happy Birthday to You” song was composed and where the Louisville Slugger bat first struck a baseball. When you buy Kentucky Land for Sale, you’re staking a claim on America at its best.

Kentucky has more navigational waterways than any other state except Alaska. Its borders were once defined by three great river systems: the Big Sandy River and Tug Fork to the east, the Ohio to the north and the Mississippi to the west. But when the Mississippi jumped its course and flowed backwards following the 1812 New Madrid Earthquake, a 200 square mile parcel of what had been defined as Kentucky found itself surrounded by Missouri and Tennessee. Fulton County today remains part of Kentucky, the only non-contiguous county in the entire United States. 

The famous “Bourbon Trail” wends its way through the rolling, hilly bluegrass pastures in northern Kentucky that give the commonwealth its nickname, “The Bluegrass State.” Sadly pastures and horse farms are giving way to residential and commercial development as the hub cities of Lexington and Louisville expand. In the central part of the state you’ll find the Mammoth Caves, the world’s longest underground system of caverns: new discoveries every year add to the subterranean grotto’s 367 mile length. The Cumberland Gap – a natural break in the Appalachian Mountains, carved by water and wind – offers breathtaking vistas of Tennessee and Virginia as well as Kentucky.

Louisville on the Ohio River, the largest city in the state, is world famous as the site of the Kentucky Derby, one of the most celebrated of all horse racing events. Louisville is the global headquarters for appliance maker General Electric Consumer and Industrial, as well as the site of the UPS Worldport, the main air hub for the United Parcel Service. The city is also an important automobile manufacturing center.

Kentucky’s second largest city is Lexington, known as the Horse Capital of the World, and one of the fastest-developing metropolitan areas in the United States. Unless you really remember your third grade geography lessons, don’t even try to guess the state capital: it’s tiny Frankfurt on the Kentucky River, and it does not even have its own airport.

What’s the weather like in Kentucky? Pretty darn nice. Winters are moderate with annual snowfalls that range between five and ten inches; summers are warm and humid. Extreme weather has been known to strike, most recently in 1997 when heavy rainstorms pounded the northern part of the state resulting in floods along the Ohio River, and then again in 2009 when 100,000 homes lost electricity for a week at the height of winter following a severe ice storm.

In much of rural Kentucky, agriculture is still the most important economic activity, not agribusiness but small family farms: the average farm size in the Bluegrass State is 153 acres, and Kentucky has more farms per square mile than any other state in the U.S. Eastern Kentucky’s coal mining region is among the nation’s most productive. But Kentucky’s economy is dominated by the manufacturing activities of its urban centers — specifically Louisville — and were extremely hard hit by the recent recession. The unemployment rate throughout the state remains in the double digits and the Commonwealth is struggling under the burden of its state debt. The Bluegrass State experienced very little in the way of a housing bubble, so when property prices dropped, Kentucky real estate became a bargain. Kentucky Land for Sale is a real buying opportunity, not just a temporary correction of over-inflated values.