Oldham County, Kentucky
| Oldham County, Kentucky | ||
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Oldham County courthouse in La Grange
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 Location in the U.S. state of Kentucky |
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 Kentucky's location in the U.S. |
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| Founded | December 15, 1823 | |
| Named for | William Oldham (1753–1791), American Revolutionary War colonel | |
| Seat | La Grange | |
| Largest city | La Grange | |
| Area | ||
| • Total | 196 sq mi (508 km2) | |
| • Land | 187 sq mi (484 km2) | |
| • Water | 9.2 sq mi (24 km2), 4.7% | |
| Population | ||
| • (2010) | 60,316 | |
| • Density | 322/sq mi (124/km²) | |
| Congressional district | 4th | |
| Time zone | Eastern: UTC-5/-4 | |
| Website | www |
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Oldham County is a county located in the commonwealth of Kentucky. As of the 2010 census, the population was 60,316. Its county seat is La Grange. The county is named for Colonel William Oldham. Oldham County was a prohibition or completely dry county until January 2005 as the result of a 2004 'moist' vote, permitting sales of alcohol in restaurants that seat at least 100 patrons in which 70%+ of total revenue is derived from sales of food. After a vote in late 2015; Oldham county has become a completely wet county.
Oldham County is part of the Louisville/Jefferson County, KY–IN Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Oldham County is the wealthiest county in Kentucky and 20th wealthiest county in the U.S. and ranks second highest in Kentucky for percent of college educated residents. While the causes for this are complicated, areas east of Louisville have long been popular with wealthy residents, initially as summer residences and eventually as year-round suburban estates and bedroom communities. Oldham County lies northeast of the best known of these areas, Anchorage, just outside Louisville's pre-merger East End.
Oldham County was established on December 15, 1823 from parts of Henry, Jefferson, and Shelby Counties. It was the 74th Kentucky county, and was named in honor of Col. William Oldham of Jefferson County, a Revolutionary War officer.
Initially, it was mainly a rural county with small, scattered developments in places like Westport which was founded in 1800 and served as the county seat early on. When the Louisville and Frankfort Railroad Company introduced rail lines in the area in the 1850s, many new towns and communities sprang up. Eventually the railroad ceased operating as a form of public transportation, but the more rural nature of the county continued to draw residents away from the metropolitan areas in Jefferson County. Since the early 1970s and the completion of Interstate 71, which connects Oldham County to Downtown Louisville and shopping in Eastern Jefferson County, Oldham County has increasingly become suburban in nature, a natural extension of Louisville's wealthy East End as it ran out of large tracts of undeveloped land.
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Wikipedia