Hardin County, the fourth largest county in Kentucky,
is a community in transition.
Struggling to preserve its small-town traditions while adapting to the
pressures of population growth and the shift from an agriculture and
industrial base to a service-based economy, the Heartland county sits
at the crossroads of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
The county is strategically located along the busy I-65 corridor, transversed
by the Blue Grass and Western Kentucky Parkways, 40 miles south of Louisville,
84 miles southwest of Lexington and 128 miles north of Nashville, Tenn..
Hardin County is within a days drive of 60 percent of the nations population.
The county has an airport with a 5,000-foot runway and two railroads
serve the area.
The county's population, as of July 2002, was 95,724, representing a
more than 5.5 percent growth since 1990, according to the latest estimates
by the U.S. Census Bureau. The growth would have been even more significant
if Fort Knox, located in the northern end of the county, had not lost
9,000 soldiers in defense cutbacks during the 1990s.
Unlike most other counties in the state, Hardin County includes two cities
of approximately equal size. The population of Elizabethtown, the county
seat, grew 24 percent from 1990-2000 reaching 22,542 in the Census. Radcliff,
the home of Fort Knox, grew 11.1 percent, reaching 21,961.
The county's civilian workforce includes 39,000 workers, but businesses
in the county employ workers who commute daily from neighboring LaRue,
Grayson, Breckinridge, Nelson, Meade, Hart, Green, Jefferson, Bullitt
and Taylor counties.
The Town Mall in Elizabethtown attracts shoppers from surrounding counties.
Hardin Memorial Hospital and related medical facilities also serve the
region.
Elizabethtown Community College and Elizabethtown Technical College in
Elizabethtown and McKendree College in Radcliff provide higher education
and job-training opportunities for high school graduates.
Alcoholic beverages are available by the drink at restaurants in Elizabethtown
and Radcliff, a relatively new development which has attracted the interest
of national restaurant chains to do business in the county.
Two new entertainment venues have opened, the Hardin County Schools Performing
Arts Center at John Hardin High School, and the reopened and expanded
State Theater in Elizabethtown.
The county now boasts what is considered the premium industrial development
site in the state 1,600 acres of government land just outside the quaint,
small town of Glendale, accessible from I-65.
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