US Map / Cities / Lexington

Lexington Map

Lexington and Fayette County are one and the same government, covering a plateau of limestone pasture in the middle of Kentucky's Bluegrass country.

Where is Lexington?

Lexington is in north-central Kentucky, in the Inner Bluegrass, an area of gently rolling farmland ringed further out by steeper, poorer country. Louisville is about 80 miles west along I-64, Cincinnati roughly 80 miles north across the Ohio River, and Nashville some 210 miles southwest. Frankfort, the state capital, is only about 25 miles west — a small town by comparison with either of the cities on each side of it. The Appalachian foothills begin roughly 40 miles east, and the change in the landscape at that line is abrupt.

Lexington at a glance

Lexington in Kentucky

In 1974 Lexington merged with Fayette County, so the city limits and the county line are the same line; there is no unincorporated Fayette County and no separate county seat. The Kentucky county map shows the result — a single compact county in a state that has 120 of them, more than all but two other states. Lexington is Kentucky's second city after Louisville, and the two, along with the northern Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati, hold most of the state's urban population. The state is divided between Eastern and Central time and Lexington keeps Eastern; the Kentucky state page shows where that line runs.

Limestone, pasture and the Kentucky River gorge

The horse farms are a geological consequence. Ordovician limestone lies close under the Inner Bluegrass, and the soils weathered from it are unusually rich in phosphorus and calcium, which grows pasture that builds bone well. That single fact explains the fences, the barns and the land prices. The city sits at about 980 feet on a broad, well-drained plateau with almost no surface relief — until the Kentucky River, a few miles west and south, drops into a gorge several hundred feet deep between sheer limestone walls known as the Palisades. Lexington drew an urban service boundary in 1958, among the first in the country, which is why the farmland still starts more or less where the subdivisions stop. Eastward the plateau gives way to the western edge of the Appalachians and the coalfields beyond.

Cities near Lexington

Louisville and Cincinnati are within an easy drive, with Nashville, Indianapolis and Columbus each a few hours further out. The East South Central division page shows Kentucky alongside Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi.