Monticello City Hall is located at 120 South Main Street, Monticello, KW 42633.
Phone: 606-348-5719.
Established in 1801, the City of Monticello is named after the home of Thomas Jefferson.
Neighborhoods
Monticello is located in the center of present day Wayne County, approximately twelve miles south of the Cumberland River and fifteen miles north of the Kentucky/Tennessee line. It is located along the line which runs from northeast to southwest which separates the terrain of Wayne County into two distinct types: The fertile, arable Pennyrile plateaus land of the northwestern part of the county and the steep, forested, mountainous land of the southeast.
Monticello [†] is the county seat of Wa3me County which was formed in 1800, the 43rd in Kentucky. Incorporated by the State Legislature on January 8, 1810, it had a log courthouse in the center of a small square and 53 houses. The population of the city remained small throughout the 19th century. According to local historian, Augusta P. Johnson Monticello was a village of 300 in the 1860s and 1870s.
Monticello and Wayne County experienced limited economic and population growth until the final decade of the 19th century due to its Isolation south of the Cumberland River and the failure of the community to gain railroad service. Throughout the 19th century, the shipment of products remained dependent on the packet boats plying the Cumberland River and travel to Monticello required a stagecoach ride of 20 miles to Burnside, 20 miles away, for connection with the main line of the Cincinnati and Southern Railway.
Monticello's function was limited primarily to governmental affairs in the 19th century, three successive courthouses were constructed in the center of the town square. When it became necessary to build a fourth courthouse in 1878, the fiscal court decided to relocate away from the somewhat cramped square to the corner of Main and Michigan Streets, approximately one block east of the original site. Without the courthouse, the square continued to be the focus of commercial life in the town which when it would require additional space would move east along Main to the site of the new courthouse.
Almost all the lots on the square and in the first block of Main Street had new buildings constructed on them between 1890 and 1910 as the Wayne County oil boom brought a growth in population and wealth like no other period in Wayne County history. The population of the county increased from 12,852 in 1890 to 17,518 in 1910 and Monticello grew from the 300 of the 1870s to 1,514 in 1920. A substantial part of the goods and services required by the oil industry and its growing workforce were provided from the Monticello Commercial District. Due to the insubstantial nature of oil producing equipment and the brevity of the oil boom years, remains the most concrete physical testimony of that era.
† Adapted from; Robert M. Polsgrove, Historic Sites Program Manager, Kentucky Heritage Council, Monticello Historic Commercial District, 1982, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C., accessed November, 2024