Louisville is the state’s capital and the state capital of Jefferson County, which borders the Ohio River and the state’s largest metropolis. Located in Jefferson County, Kentucky, Louisville is the hub of a metro area that includes Clark & Floyd counties of Indiana. New Albany & Jeffersonville, Indiana, are connected by bridges over the Ohio River. Following a vote won in 2000, both city & Jefferson county amalgamated in 2003, tripling the city’s population and expanding its territory sixfold.
On July 8, 1773, Captain Thomas Bullitt landed in the area with a mission of the governor to survey the country. In the American Revolutionary, a party of immigrants accompanying American commander George Rogers Clark arrived (May 1778) at Corn Islands (since wiped away by floods) near Beargrass Creek, when Clark established a base for the invasion of the Britain Old Northeast. Most of the immigrants who arrived with him settled in Fort-on-Shore (Fort Nelson) inside the current city borders the following winter.