City of Russellville, 168 South Main Street, Russellville, KY 42276, Phone: 270-726-5000.
Neighborhoods
In 1790, William Cook, his wife, and 18-year-old William Stewart established the first permanent residence at the site of Russellville, originally known as Logan Court House. After it was chosen as the county seat in 1792, the name was changed in 1798 to Russellville, in honor of General William Russell (1735Ð1793), a veteran of the American Revolutionary War who owned a 2,000 acre military land grant at the townsite. As a Virginia representative to the Continental Congress, Russell aided in drafting the Declaration of Independence. Platted in 1795, Russellville was formally established by the Kentucky Legislature in 1810. Logan County originally stretched from the Little Barren River on the east, to the Mississippi River to the west, and from the Ohio and Green rivers on the north, to Tennessee on the south. Over time, 28 counties were carved out of Logan. Many of the original settlers of Russellville were from Middle Tennessee.
† Hstoric Architecture Survey and Assessment of Effects for the proposed Russellville Solar Farm, 2022, www.ky.gov, accessed May, 2025.
Russellville [†] is the county seat of Logan County, which is located in the southern tier of Kentucky counties along the Tennessee border. Although identified with Western Kentucky most of which was formed from the original Logan County the town has many connections with central Kentucky (the Bluegrass region) and metropolitan Louisville, as well as with Nashville, Tennessee, and other cities across the border. Historically, however, the "southern" character predominates: most of the early settlers in the late 18th century came up the Cumberland and Red rivers from central Tennessee into Kentucky; Jefferson Davis' birthplace is located in adjacent Todd County and his memory is revered throughout the area;*and the regional economy, still based on agriculture (although about half of the present county's population works in industry) resembles that of the corresponding parts of Tennessee, where some of the flavor of the old plantation system still remains. Yet,since the early 19th century, when the town began to redeem its initial reputation as a "rogue's harbor" (talented and individualistic as several of those rogues seem to have been), Russellville has been a banking center for much of surrounding Western Kentucky, thus, t'he town has had a distinct cultural identity, perhaps best symbolized by the building that housed the Southern Bank of Kentucky and the Nimrod Long Bank in the period just before and after the Civil War. Within a structure of remarkable architectural sophistication were institutions whose personnel included members of some of the most eminent (and philanthropic) families in Kentucky's history, yet this landmark is best known for its robbery by the notorious gangster, Jesse James.
† Mary Cronan, Historian; Walter E. Langsam, Architectural Historian, Kentucky Heritage Commission, Russellville Historic District, nomination document, 1976, National Register of Historic Places, Wasington, D.C.