Louisville Map
Louisville grew at the only natural obstacle on the Ohio River, and since the 2003 merger with Jefferson County its government has covered about 794,000 people.
Where is Louisville?
Louisville is on the northern edge of Kentucky, on the south bank of the Ohio River directly opposite Indiana. It is about 100 miles southwest of Cincinnati, roughly 115 miles south of Indianapolis, and some 175 miles northeast of Nashville — a position on the border between the Midwest and the South that shows in almost everything about the city.
Louisville at a glance
| State | Kentucky |
| County | Jefferson County |
| Population | 793,881 (2024 Census estimate) |
| Rank among US cities | No. 18 of the 100 largest |
| Time zone | Eastern Time |
| Region | South (East South Central division) |
Louisville sits at No. 18 in the 2024 estimates, 33,645 people behind San Francisco and 12,886 ahead of Seattle. Lexington is the only other Kentucky city on the list. That is about 17% of Kentucky's 4.59 million residents inside a single municipal line. City and county are one outline here: Jefferson County and the city limits enclose the same 793,881 people.
Louisville in Kentucky
The 2003 merger folded the city into Jefferson County, so the two now share a boundary on the Kentucky county map — one of 120 counties, an unusually high number for a state of Kentucky's size. Lexington, about 80 miles east, merged with Fayette County in a similar way in 1974, and the capital, Frankfort, sits between them. See the Kentucky state page for more.
The Falls of the Ohio
The Falls of the Ohio are not a waterfall but a two-mile stretch of limestone rapids — the only place on the Ohio River's 981 miles where boats could not simply keep going. Cargo had to be portaged around them, and a town grew up to do the work. The Louisville and Portland Canal, opened in 1830, finally let traffic pass, and a lock still carries it today. The exposed fossil beds at the falls are among the largest of their kind anywhere. North of the river the land is Indiana's flat glacial plain; south of it Kentucky rises into knobs and karst.
Cities near Louisville
Nearby are Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Lexington, Nashville and St. Louis. The East South Central division page puts Kentucky with its neighbors.