Owensboro, KY: Autumn 2009

[Muck308 55]

I took a trip to Owensboro in October and I thought I would share some pics.

East 2nd Street

Glover H. Cary Bridge

Ohio River

Daviess Street

Allen Steet

East 5th Street

The Indiana side of the bridge. I intended to walk back up a bit and get a shot of Owensboro from there. After seeing how much room there was I opted against it.

Lowlands on the northern bank of the Ohio River near Co Rd 710. Rockport Power Plant is in the distance.

[Raysfan16 5]

Wow, that's a nice town.

Seems like a nice place to spend an afternoon. How big is Owensboro? Maybe about 20K?

Great pics, Muck!

[Muck308 55]

From Wikipedia:

The population was 55,512 at the 2008 U.S. Census Estimate.quote>

It is a nice town. A lot of the storefronts are getting pretty beat up and many are empty, however I did notice quite a bit of renovation taking place as I walked around. Owensboro is the 3rd largest city in Kentucky, provided you count Lexington-Fayette as one city (which it isn't, as far as I know, but it is one metro area.) Glad you liked the pics.

[Raysfan16 5]

It's pretty amazing that there's no development north of there, but there are suburbs going way out south of town. Put that town in Florida, and there would be lots of development north of the bridge.

[simcityx100 0]

I live close to Owensboro. Ky

[boxvic 0]

ZOMBIE THREAD!

I actually live in Owensboro. Born here, raised here, and hopefully will die here (a long time in the future *crosses fingers).

To the original poster, you are really brave to to have gotten out to take a picture on the off-ramp of the Big Blue Bridge. This must have been taken on a weekend I assume, because on weekdays the bridge carries about 8,000 cars and probably another few thousand trucks. I hate meeting trucks on that bridge, so I would certainly not want to be hugging the railing if a truck came by while I was trying to snap a pic. Kuddos to you. The Blue Bridge looks like crap these days. They opened a new artsy-looking four lane bridge just outside of town to carry traffic into Indiana on US231, but no one who isn't actually going to Rockport uses it because its an extra 10 minute drive to the bride and then 10 minutes back to Indiana 161. Though this summer the Blue Bridge is closing for a total deck rehab, so people are going to have to use the Natcher bridge anyway.

These pictures were also taken about the time a total downtown refurbishment project was started. The plan is to totally rebuild downtown to add more housing amongst the commercial buildings. As it is downtown is pretty much bars, government buildings, and a few regional commercial offices. The new redevelopment plan wants to add more walk-up apartments and lofts so that retail will pick up again.

To the population, Owensboro proper has a population of about 57K, but it is the primary city for most people in this area East of Evansville, In. The population of the actual Owensboro MSA is about 114K; but for whatever reason the Owensboro MSA doesn't include Spencer County Indiana (right across the river) or Perry County Indiana. If you include those two counties (which they should be included)then the overall metro population is about 150K. I mean Owensboro isn't a huge metropolis by any stretch, but downtown looks a bit misleading- we are a sprawl city. We build out and not up. Hopefully that is changing with the downtown redevelopment.

And as for development north of the river... I've wondered that myself. There are a few decent sized little communities up Indiana 161 like Reo; but everything right around the river is just farmland. I've always heard that it is political, Indiana and Kentucky don't fully agree on the border there, but I don't really know for sure. As it is most of the new development is taking place on an east and southeast corridor out of town on Kentucky 54 and around US 60.

Long post about stuff no one here cares about, but I love talking about "home".

EDIT: Also that picture on Indiana County road 710 shows the OMU Elmer Smith plant in the distance. That is the Owensboro plant on the southside of the river. The Rockport plant is about 10 miles north-by-northeast from there.

  Edited May 23, 2011 by boxvic  

[Ol' Michiganian 6]

That's one huge bump boxvic.

[boxvic 0]

Like I said, zombie thread!

I just happened to run across this thread when I was searching for an Owensboro area map on the STEX. I accidentally set it to search the forums, and viola this thread popped up. And I'll take every opportunity to talk about home that I can.