Jackson Purchase

The Jackson Purchase, also known as the Purchase Region or simply the Purchase, is a region in the U.S. state of Kentucky bounded by the Mississippi River to the west, the Ohio River to the north, and Tennessee River to the east. Although officially part of Kentucky at its statehood in 1792, the land did not come under definitive U.S. control until 1818, when Andrew Jackson purchased it from the Chickasaw Indians. Historically, this region has been considered the most "Southern" of Kentucky.

Jackson's Purchase also included all of Tennessee west of the Tennessee River. However, in modern usage the term refers only to the Kentucky portion of the Jackson Purchase. The southern portion is simply called West Tennessee.

The Purchase comprised what is now seven counties, with a combined land area of 3,394.8 square miles (6,202.5 km²), about 6.03 percent of Kentucky's land area. Its 2010 census population was 196,365 inhabitants, equal to 4.53 percent of the state's population. Paducah, the largest city and main economic center, has just over 25,000 residents. The region's other two largest cities, Murray and Mayfield, have about 18,000 and 10,000 residents respectively. The main educational institution is Murray State University.

Though chiefly an agricultural economy, tourism is an important industry in the Purchase, focused chiefly on water-related activities at the TVA-created Kentucky Lake. Together with the portion of the Tennessee River north of Kentucky Dam, it forms the eastern border of the Purchase.

Historically having an agricultural economy tied to cotton plantations and the use of enslaved labor before the Civil War, the Purchase in the years after the war voted as the most staunchly Democratic region in Kentucky. For well over a century, it provided such overwhelming margins for Democratic candidates that Kentucky Democrats routinely called it the "Gibraltar of Democracy". The most widely circulated newspaper and media outlet in the Purchase, The Paducah Sun, was once named the Paducah Sun-Democrat (see WPSD-TV). Due to changing demographics, most counties in the Purchase in the early 21st century have populations that are overwhelmingly white. Many African Americans left the area after the Civil War and in the Great Migration of the 20th century.

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