River Mile: 545

Population: 3,890

U.S. Census Profile

Originally called Port William, the town was laid out in 1792, the same year Kentucky became a state. It was renamed Carrollton in 1838—when Carroll County was split off of Gallatin County—after Charles Carroll, an Irish-American planter and politician, and the only Catholic signatory of the Declaration of Independence. The town’s location by the confluence of the Kentucky and Ohio Rivers, between Cincinnati and Louisville, made river trade a keystone of the economy, particularly of agricultural goods. The Carrollton tobacco market was one of the largest in the world. The construction of the Louisville & Nashville railway nearby in 1868 further boosted the agricultural economy and soon became more important to the town’s commerce than river traffic.

About five years before that, during the Civil War, Confederates robbed the Southern Bank of Kentucky in Carrollton, and also stole the sword of army veteran, lawyer and politician William Orlando Butler. Among the historical buildings in the area, the Masterson House, built in 1792, is the oldest surviving home along the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Louisville.