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Lexington, consolidated with Fayette County, is the second-largest city in Kentucky and the 61st largest in the United States. Known as the "Horse Capital of the World", it is located on the Kentucky River in the heart of the state's Bluegrass region. With a mayor-alderman form of government, it is one of two cities in Kentucky designated by the state as first-class; the other is the state's largest city of Louisville. In the 2014 U.S. Census Estimate, the city's population was 310,797, anchoring a metropolitan area of 489,435 people and a combined statistical area of 708,677 people.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=American FactFinder – Results )〕 Lexington ranks tenth among US cities in college education rate, with 39.5% of residents having at least a bachelor's degree. It is the location of the Kentucky Horse Park, The Red Mile and Keeneland race courses, Rupp Arena, the world's largest basketball-specific arena, Transylvania University, the University of Kentucky and Bluegrass Community & Technical College. ==History== This area of fertile soil and abundant wildlife was long occupied by varying tribes of Native Americans. European explorers began to trade with them but settlers did not come in force until the late 18th century. Lexington was founded by European Americans in June 1775, in what was then considered Fincastle County, Virginia, 17 years before Kentucky became a state. A party of frontiersmen, led by William McConnell, camped on the Middle Fork of Elkhorn Creek (now known as Town Branch and rerouted under Vine Street) at the site of the present-day McConnell Springs. Upon hearing of the colonists' victory in the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, they named their campsite Lexington. It was the first of what would be many American places to be named after the Massachusetts town. The risk of Indian attacks delayed permanent settlement for four years. In 1779, during the American Revolutionary War, Col. Robert Patterson and 25 companions came from Fort Harrod and erected a blockhouse. They built cabins and a stockade, establishing a settlement known as Bryan Station. In 1780, Lexington was made the seat of Virginia's newly organized Fayette County. Colonists defended it against a British and Indian attack in 1782, during the last part of the American Revolutionary War. The town was chartered on May 6, 1782, by an act of the Virginia General Assembly.〔 The First African Baptist Church was founded by Peter Durrett,〔("First African Baptist Church" ), ''Lexington: The Athens of the West'', National Park Service. Retrieved August 21, 2010.〕 a Baptist preacher and slave held by Joseph Craig. Durrett helped guide "The Traveling Church", a group migration of several hundred pioneers led by the preacher Lewis Craig and Captain William Ellis from Orange County, Virginia to Kentucky in 1781. It is the oldest black Baptist congregation in Kentucky and the third oldest in the United States.〔 By 1820, Lexington was one of the largest and wealthiest towns west of the Allegheny Mountains. So cultured was its lifestyle that the city gained the nickname "Athens of the West". One early prominent citizen, John Wesley Hunt, became the first millionaire west of the Alleghenies. The growing town was devastated by a cholera epidemic in 1833: 500 of 7,000 residents died within two months, including nearly one-third of the congregation of Christ Church Episcopal.〔("Christ Church Episcopal" ), Lexington, National Park Service. Retrieved August 21, 2010.〕 London Ferrill, second preacher of First African Baptist, was one of three clergy who stayed in the city to serve the suffering victims.〔 Additional cholera outbreaks occurred in 1848–49 and the early 1850s. Cholera was spread by people using contaminated water supplies, but its transmission was not understood in those years. Often the wealthier people would flee town for outlying areas to try to avoid the spread of disease. Planters held slaves for use as field hands, laborers, artisans, and domestic servants. In the city, slaves worked primarily as domestic servants and artisans, although they also worked with merchants, shippers, and in a wide variety of trades. In 1850, one-fifth of the state's population were slaves, and Lexington had the highest concentration of slaves in the state. It also had a population of free blacks, often of mixed race. By 1850, First African Baptist Church, led by London Ferrill, a free black from Virginia, had a congregation of 1820, the largest of any, black or white, in the entire state.〔(H. E. Nutter, ''A Brief History of the First Baptist Church (Black) Lexington, Kentucky'' ), 1940, accessed August 22, 2010〕 Many of 19th-century America's most important people spent part of their lives in the city, including U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate President Jefferson Davis (who attended Transylvania University in 1823 and 1824); Confederate general John Hunt Morgan; U.S. Senator and Vice President John C. Breckinridge; and Speaker of the House, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State Henry Clay, who had a plantation nearby. Lincoln's wife Mary Todd Lincoln was born and raised in Lexington, and the couple visited the city several times after their marriage in 1842. In 1935, the Addiction Research Center (ARC) was created as a small research unit at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington. Founded as one of the first drug rehabilitation clinics in the nation, the ARC was affiliated with a Federal prison. Expanded as the first alcohol and drug rehabilitation hospital in the United States, it was known as "Narco" of Lexington. The hospital was later converted to operate as part of the federal prison system; it is known as the Federal Medical Center, Lexington and serves a variety of health needs for prisoners. In 1806, Lexington was a rising city of the vast territory to the west of the Appalachian Mountains; it was described as to its spirit and quality by poet Josiah Espy in the following letter: Lexington is the largest and most wealthy town in Kentucky, or indeed west of the Allegheny Mountains; the main street of Lexington has all the appearance of Market Street in Philadelphia on a busy day ... I would suppose it contains about five hundred dwelling houses (was closer to three hundred ), many of them elegant and three stories high. About thirty brick buildings were then raising, and I have little doubt but that in a few years it will rival, not only in wealth, but in population, the most populous inland town of the United States ... The country around Lexington for many miles in every direction, is equal in beauty and fertility to anything the imagination can paint and is already in a high state of cultivation.〔"Athens of the West;" Lexington, Kentucky: The Athens of the West – A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary; National Park Service; 2009〕 Residents fondly continue to refer to Lexington as "The Athens of the West" after Espy's poem dedicated to the city. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lexington, Kentucky」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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