In the 2000 U.S. Census, the City of Visalia, Kentucky had a population of 111 souls.
But not a one of them served on the city council.
In fact, there had not been an active city government since the early 1990s, according to the Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky.
In 2003, when the Kenton Co. board of education shuttered Visalia Elementary School, an effort that first started in the 1970s began anew: Residents wanted to dissolve the town.
In 2006, Kenton County Circuit Judge Gregory Bartlett did just that.
Founded in 1818 by Nathaniel Vise, who had been authorized by Campbell County (Kenton County wasn’t formed until 1840) to establish a community on the western side of the Licking River, its central location allowed it to serve as a county seat in 1827.
With one swift judgment, Visalia was no more, just shy of its 200th birthday.
In this issue of the LINK nky Reader, we visit the remaining Northern Kentucky cities that have populations of around a thousand people or fewer.
Across the three-county area, there are 36 incorporated cities. Boone County only has three, a situation that hasn’t changed since Florence (1830), Union (1838) and Walton (1840) made their statuses official.
The other nearly three dozen cities are in Kenton and Campbell counties.
But there used to be more.
There is a history of mergers, consolidations, and dissolutions in this region.
In fact, the City of Dayton is the result of one of Northern Kentucky’s earliest examples: Brooklyn (1848) and Jamestown (1849) decided to become one city, Dayton, in 1867.
Other communities in Campbell County that are no longer: Cote Brilliante and Clifton were both incorporated in 1888 and annexed by Newport in 1924 and 1935, respectively. Ingalls Park was also made part of Newport in 1936.
And while some existing cities in Campbell have different names than when they originally started out (Wilder was known as John’s Hill and California was 12 Mile), that’s pretty much it on the consolidation front.
There has been much more activity in Kenton County over the centuries.
Covington, which was the focus of anti-annexation efforts in the middle of the 20th century, has a long history of growth through once neighboring communities. Central Covington (the area made up of the Peaselburg neighborhood today) was incorporated in 1880 and annexed in 1906. Latonia, which incorporated as South Covington in 1894, was annexed in 1909.
Rosedale became part of the City of Covington in 1916, and West Covington, incorporated in 1858, joined the bigger city in 1916, too.
Kenton Hills had a short life as an independent city. The community around Devou Park was incorporated in 1962 but by 1965 joined Covington.
Edgewood was founded in 1948 and grew by the merger of Summit Hills Heights and St. Pius Heights in 1968. Fort Mitchell saw South Fort Mitchell join its city in 1967, 40 years after the smaller municipality was incorporated. Crescent Park was incorporated in 1950 and annexed by Ft. Mitchell in 1999.
Fort Wright is another example of a city that grew through mergers and annexations. South Hills (1960), Lookout Heights (1967) and Lakeview (1977) are all now part of the larger city.
What’s to blame or credit for which cities survive and which don’t? Fate, luck, fortune, geography?
One certainly can’t blame Nathaniel Vise for the fate of his namesake Visalia.
In 1852, his family founded another city out west, Visalia, California. In 2020, the U.S. Census reported its population at more than 141,000.
Editor’s note: LINK nky thanks Kenton County Public Library Executive Director Dave Schroeder for his research on tiny towns of the past.
