Jeffersontown's old Town Square at the intersection of Taylorsville Road and Watterson Trail still offers glimpses of history amid a largely modern suburb.

There's a lot of history packed into Jeffersontown, but sometimes it can

Most passers-by, however, think of the suburban sprawl of Hurstbourne Lane and Plainview as more typical of the county's oldest suburb.

be a bit hard to spot it amid the suburban sprawl. As one of Kentucky's fastest-growing cities and the beneficiary of much of the booming development that turned Hurstbourne Lane from a lazy rural lane into a six-land commercial strip during the 1970s and '80s, Jeffersontown has seen its population increase sixfold since the 1970 census, with aggressive annexation changing its presence on the map from a rather unassuming village into a sprawling suburban city that stretches around Louisville's southeastern flank from Shelbyville Road almost all the way to Bardstown Road.

Jeffersontown's earliest settlers, including Capt. Robert Tyler (who, coincidentally, was Harry S. Truman's great-great grandfather) and his brothers, Ned and Moses, arrived in the early 1780s, not long after George Rogers Clark's 1778 encampment on Corn Island that eventually grew into Louisville). (One Jeffersontown history indicates that the Tylers arrived in 1771, seven years before Clark and well before the American Revolution.)

The modern Jeffersontown City Hall was built during the 1970s, during the city's rapid growth period.

One certain date in Jeffersontown's history is 1797, when the Jefferson County Court approved settler Abraham Bruner's petition to found a city on his 122 acres on the hilltop site that is now the center of old Jeffersontown at Taylorsville Road and Watterson Trail. Although early inhabitants called it Brunerstown after the founder, it wasn't long before it took the name of Thomas Jefferson, who was vice president at the time of the city's founding and became the nation's third president in 1801.

For much of the next century, Jeffersontown and Louisville were the only two incorporated cities in Jefferson County, but while the city grew, Jeffersontown remained little more than a sleepy rural community, totaling only 350 residents by 1840.

Along the way, the village welcomed such early suburbanites as Courier-Journal editor Henry Watterson, who built a mansion there called Mansfield (and later gave his name to Watterson Trail) in 1896; he became a regular commuter to Louisville on the electric interurban rail line that began operating shortly after the turn of the new century.

But even with the interurban cars creating a handly link to Louisville, and a marked increase in subdivision development in the housing boom after World War II, fueled further by the arrival of General Electric's Appliance Park in Buechel not far away, Jeffersontown's population remained only about 3,500 in the 1960 census, and its corporate boundaries remained pretty much within Bruner's original plat.

But all that began to change during the early 1970s, when development started stirring on Hurstbourne Lane. Under the administration of Mayor Franklin J. Chambers, who served several terms during the period, and his City Council, Jeffersontown began quietly, then aggressively, seeking development and annexing land.

"Parklike" may be too gentle a word, but the Bluegrass Research and Industrial Park's open lawns and non-polluting industries are a far cry from traditional industrial areas.

The Bluegrass Research and Industrial Park -- a then innovative concept, featuring a parklike industrial area limited to quiet, non-polluting industries presumed compatible with residential development -- secured a large stretch of land north of the city limits along the just-completed I-64, and its managers consented to annexation. More subdivisions quickly followed, along with shopping centers to serve them, and the city grew.

Later during the '70s, developers announced plans for Plainview, the region's first major "planned development" -- featuring commercial and office space, townhouses and apartments and single-family homes -- on the north side of I-64, extending north to Shelbyville Road. This was a long way from land that anyone in town thought of as Jeffersontown, but to general amazement, Chambers and his council moved quickly, negotiating with Plainview's developers a friendly, unopposed annexation.

The pattern repeated itself over coming years, under Chambers' administration and that of his successors, with most new commercial and housing developments in the area more-or-less willingly accepting annexation by fast-growing Jeffersontown. What was in it for the developers? Jeffersontown's police protection was one element, but the strongest factor was surely the mayor and council's implicit, if rarely expressed, willingness to be cooperative with developers on matters of land-use, zoning and building. As a fourth-class city, Jeffersontown has the authority to make zoning and building-permit decisions locally rather than referring them to Jefferson Fiscal Court as in most of the suburbs.

Eventually Jeffersontown's annexation policy came to an end, when Louisville, finally becoming concerned about the growing competitor on its flank, proposed annexing the entire remaining unincorporated territory in Jefferson County, a concept so terrifying to most suburbanites that the ensuing negotiations led to formation of the city-county "compact," under which all cities in the county have agreed to halt all annexation, thus freezing the boundaries of all cities in the county -- including Jeffersontown and Louisville.

By the time the compact took force, however, Jeffersontown had seen its population grow to 23,221 in the 1990 Census (24,314 by a 1994 estimate), making it the second largest city in Jefferson County after Louisville and the eleventh largest city in Kentucky, ranking just behind Ashland and slightly ahead of Richmond.

Modern Jeffersontown has adopted the antique gaslight as its civic symbol.

The festival will be Sept. 14-20 this year, with most of the events over the weekend of Sept. 18-20. Events, mostly centered on the old Town Square at Taylorsville and Watterson, include the Gaslight Parade is Thursday night, Balloon Glow and Street Dance Friday night, Firefighters' Olympics on Saturday, and the huge arts and crafts fair Friday through Sunday. For detailed information, see Jeffersontown's Gaslight Festival Page.

Story and photos
by Robin Garr