Covington, Kentucky, A Historical Guide

When the Kentucky General Assembly in February 1815 established the town of Covington, Kentucky, located on 150 acres at the confluence of the Ohio and Licking rivers opposite the established city of Cincinnati, many observers may have thought that the new town would not survive infancy. Both the War of 1812, which had recently ended, and the continuing effects of the 1819 depression made westward expansion financially difficult, thus severely retarding the growth of commercial towns.

However, many early pioneers of the west were not easily discouraged. Hence in 1814, John Gano, Richard Gano, and Thomas Carneal invested $50,000 in the above mentioned 150 acres, calling their new riverfront enterprise the “Covington Company,” in recognition of Leonard Covington, a War of 1812 general who once trained troops in the area. The investors, who purchased the land from Thomas Kennedy, soon platted the area for about five blocks west of the Licking and six blocks south of the Ohio and in doing symbolically tied the town and future city of Covington to its large neighbor directly across the Ohio.  The north and south streets of Covington were drawn in a direct line with the north and south streets of the three-decade old Cincinnati plat. From the Licking River, Gano and partners named the streets Shelby, Kennedy, Garrard, Greenup, and Scott – all Kentucky governors. The following year when George Madison was elected governor, the last of the north and south streets was named Madison. Adopting Cincinnati’s grid design, the company surveyors drew the east and west streets at right angles to the others. The following is the 1815 plat taken from Allen W. Smith’s book “At the Point.” Note that Madison Street is not yet named.