Do you know the Kentucky cities with the highest and lowest populations? Take a look.
%20(1).png "Some of the cities that comprise Kentucky’s smallest and largest towns are (clockwise starting in upper left corner) Buckhorn, Louisville, Lexington and Richmond.")
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Kentucky’s dissolving towns
The potential dissolution of some Kentucky cities is the result of a measure approved in the 2022 legislative session, Senate Bill 106, which was in part a response to an issue that arose over money destined for cities under federal coronavirus relief packages.
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Do you know the Kentucky cities with the highest and lowest populations? Take a look.
Bye bye, Blackey? And Vicco? And Keene? Bill would dissolve defunct Kentucky cities
Much of Kentucky is rural, but these days more than half its population of 4.5 million lives in an incorporated city, according to the Kentucky League of Cities.
Some of those cities are pretty small. Gratz, in Owen County, for instance, counted just 66 residents as of July 1, 2021, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.
But more than a third of the state’s residents live in the five counties with the largest populations at the time of the 2020 Census: Jefferson, Fayette, Kenton, Boone and Warren. Not surprisingly, several of the largest cities in the state are in those counties.
These were the 10 largest cities in Kentucky as of July 1, 2021, the date of the most recent U.S. Census estimates, according to the Kentucky State Data Center at the University of Louisville:
Louisville / Jefferson County: 628,594
Lexington — Fayette County: 321,793
Bowling Green: 73,529
Owensboro: 60,011
Covington: 40,837
Georgetown: 37,730
Richmond: 35,756
Florence: 32,132
Elizabethtown: 31,931
Nicholasville: 31,490
Four of the cities — Louisville, Lexington, Owensboro and Covington — saw slight population decreases between July 1, 2020 and July 1, 2021, but Georgetown, Nicholasville and Richmond had among the largest increases of the cities in the Top 10.
Richmond grew the most of any city in that group, adding 918 people during the year, an increase of 2.6 percent.
Smallest cities
The 10 Kentucky cities with the lowest populations as of July 1, 2021, according to information from the data center, were:
Buckhorn: 81
California: 80
Blandville: 71
Woodbury: 71
Blaine: 69
Gratz: 66
Sardis: 62
Carrville: 47
Concord: 19
South Park View: 0
This story was originally published January 19, 2023 at 10:00 AM.
