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.
