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The first Europeans known to have reached the area carved their names on beech trees near the river around 1775. By 1778, settlers established McFadden’s Station on the north bank of the Barren River.
Present-day Bowling Green grew out of the homesteads of Robert and George Moore, as well as General Elijah Covington, the town’s namesake. [requires citation] Around 1794, the Moore brothers arrived from Virginia. Robert Moore contributed 2 acres (8,100 m2) of property to county trustees in 1798, two years after Warren County was founded, for the purpose of constructing public facilities. He soon followed up by donating an additional 30 to 40 acres (120,000 to 160,000 m2) of land surrounding the original area. On March 6, 1798, the Commonwealth of Kentucky formally established Bowling Green as a city.
The origins of the town’s name are a topic of debate. The hamlet was called “Bolin Green” after the Bowling Green in New York City, when patriots demolished a monument of King George III and used the lead to produce bullets during the American Revolution. According to the Encyclopedia of Kentucky, the name was taken from Bowling Green, Virginia, where early settlers came from, or from founder Robert Moore’s particular “ball alley game.” According to early sources, the city’s name was also spelt “Bowlingreen.”
19th Century
Bowling Green had 154 inhabitants by 1810. The closeness of the Barren River and the growth of steamboat commerce boosted Bowling Green’s significance. The Barren River was made much more navigable by canal locks and dams. The first portage railway, which ran from the river to the modern county courthouse, was built in 1832. Mules dragged freight and passengers on the railroads into and out of the city.
Agriculture remained an essential aspect of local life despite the growing urbanization of the Bowling Green region in the 1830s. A tourist to Bowling Green noticed a bar owner called Benjamin Vance boasting:
[Vance] claims to have seen a turnip this fall that is 32 inches in diameter and has a beet weighing sixteen pounds and a half-pound;… that corn in this country grows so quickly that if you look at it one day, it has grown a foot higher; and that the “little hickory twigs” growing in the barrens have roots as large as his legs. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad (now CSX Transportation) built a railroad through Bowling Green in 1859, connecting the city to markets in the north and south.
In an attempt to avoid the Civil War, Bowling Green proclaimed itself neutral. Both the Union and the Confederacy wanted control of the city because of its strategic position and resources. Both the Confederacy and the Lincoln government were reviled by the majority of the town’s citizens. Around 1300 Confederate forces landed from Tennessee on September 18, 1861, to capture the city, under the command of Kentucky native General Simon Bolivar Buckner. The Confederate occupants were taken aback by the city’s pro-Union sentiments. The Confederates defended the surrounding hills to prevent military access to the river’s and railroad’s key assets. The temporary Confederate government of Kentucky picked Bowling Green as its seat in November 1861.
The Confederates began to evacuate from Bowling Green on February 14, 1862, after hearing information that Union forces led by Ulysses S. Grant had conquered Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. They demolished bridges across the Barren River, the train terminal, and other key structures that the enemy could exploit. Throughout the rest of the war, the city was subjected to attacks and interruptions. Union General Stephen G. Burbridge detained 22 citizens in and near Bowling Green in the summer of 1864 on treason charges. Bowling Green inhabitants were furious against the Union as a result of this episode and subsequent severe treatment by federal forces, and their sympathies for the Confederacy grew.
Bowling Green’s business district expanded dramatically after the Civil War. Agriculture has formerly dominated the city’s economy. Many of the historic commercial structures that may be seen today were built in the 1870s. Carie Burnam Taylor’s dressmaking business was one of the most prominent in Bowling Green at the time. Taylor had about 200 female employees by 1906.
The city built its first waterworks system in 1868. In 1868, the fourth county courthouse was constructed. The first three were finished in 1798, 1805, and 1813, respectively. The city’s first mule-drawn street trams came in 1889. By 1895, the first electric street vehicles had begun to take their position.
St. Columbia’s Academy was created in 1862 by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth and was followed by St. Joseph’s School in 1911. The Southern Normal School, which had been established in 1875 in Glasgow, Kentucky, relocated to Bowling Green in 1884. In 1889, Pleasant J. Potter established a women’s college in Bowling Green. The site was transferred to the Western Kentucky State Normal School after it closed in 1909. (see below, now known as Western Kentucky University). Methodist Warren College, Ogden College (which later became a part of Western Kentucky University), and Green River Female College, a boarding institution, were all prominent colleges at the time.
20th Century
The president and owner of Southern Normal Institution, Henry Hardin Cherry, donated the school to the state in 1906 as the foundation for the Western State Normal School. The institution prepared instructors to meet the state’s growing educational demands. Western Kentucky University, as it is currently known, is the state’s second-largest public university, having just overtaken the University of Louisville. St. Joseph Hospital was founded in 1906 by doctors Lillian H. South, J. N. McCormack, and A.T. McCormack to give medical and nursing treatment to the local citizens and students.
The third and last Louisville and Nashville Railroad Station opened in 1925. Every day, around 27 trains arrived at the depot. Intercity bus routes were another major mode of transportation. Due to competition from airplanes and vehicles, railroad traffic had drastically decreased by the 1960s. The station has been converted into a museum. The construction of a Union Underwear plant in Bowling Green in 1940 considerably boosted the city’s economy. The city’s population began to surpass that of Ashland, Paducah, and Newport in the 1960s.
The downtown streets formed a traffic bottleneck. The US Route 31W Bypass was built in 1949 to relieve traffic congestion, but it also pushed commerce away from downtown. In Bowling Green, the bypass has developed into a business hub. “Your firm may develop in the direction Bowling Green is growing — to the 31-W By-Pass,” said a 1954 advertising. By the 1960s, shopping had shifted away from the downtown retail square and into suburban shopping malls. Bowling Green Mall opened its doors for commerce between May and November 1967. According to another commercial, “Shopping in one place. Simply park [for free], go out, and shop. Everything is within easy reach.” Stores in the bigger Greenwood Mall opened between September 1979 and September 1980.
Interstate 65, which passes just east of Bowling Green, was built in the late 1960s. The Green River Parkway (now known as the William H. Natcher Parkway) was built to connect Bowling Green and Owensboro in the 1970s. Many enterprises flocked to Bowling Green because of these essential transportation corridors.
General Motors relocated its Chevrolet Corvette production factory from St. Louis to Bowling Green in 1981. The National Corvette Homecoming event, which takes place every year in Bowling Green, is a significant yearly meeting of Corvette owners, automobile parades, and related festivities. The National Corvette Museum was built near the manufacturing factory in 1994.
The National Arbor Day Foundation named Bowling Green a Tree City USA in 1997.
21st Century
One of the first sections of the Downtown Redevelopment Project to be completed was the new Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce facility. The city conducted a feasibility study in 2012 to determine how to improve the downtown Bowling Green neighborhood. To plan redevelopment, the Downtown Redevelopment Authority was established. Bowling Green’s waterfront features, as well as its historic center and cityscape surrounding Fountain Square, were all integrated into the project’s plans. It also planned a new facility for the Bowling Green Center Chamber of Commerce, as well as the erection of a Riverwalk Park along the Barren River, a new public park named Circus Square, and a new retail area called the Fountain Square Market.
The new Chamber of Commerce, Riverwalk Park, and Circus Square were finished in April 2009. The Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center, a venue for arts and education, began construction in October 2009 and opened on March 10, 2012, with a concert by Vince Gill. The Fountain Square Market first opened its doors in 2012. At Weldon Peete Park in downtown Bowling Green, an effort was undertaken in 2005 to incorporate a Whitewater Park onto the riverside. The project was not financed due to the recession.
The Bowling Green Riverfront Foundation increased its efforts to develop property on the other side of the Barren River from Mitch McConnell Park (placed across the US 31-W Bypass and the riverfront, between Louisville Road and Old Louisville Road), upriver to Peete Park, in 2011. The current plans include a mountain bike route, a bicycle pump track, and a rock climbing area, as well as usage of the neighboring river for white-water sports (the length of river features rapids classified between Class II and Class IV on the International Scale of River Difficulty). Some of this facility will be built on a recovered landfill that was previously used as Bowling Green’s waste dump.
Bowling Green was named one of the Top 25 Best Places to Retire in the United States by Forbes magazine in 2014.
Two catastrophic tornadoes slammed Bowling Green in the early morning hours of December 11, 2021. The first was an EF3 tornado that killed seventeen people and severely damaged or destroyed multiple structures and residences. The second tornado, which was classified EF2, did significant damage in the city’s southern and eastern areas.
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