Business View Magazine | February 2018

240 241 down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to NewOrleans.The long trip aged the whiskey,with the oak wood giving it a distinct mellowflavor and amber color. Since then, generations of Kentuckians have contin- ued the heritage and time-honored tradition of making fine Bourbon, unchanged from the process used by their ancestors, centuries before. Today, not only is the production of Bourbon an $8.5 billion industry in Kentucky, generating as many as 17,500 jobs and $825 million in tax revenue, annually, it has also become a major tourist attraction. In fact, last year, over one million people from all 50 states and 25 countries have visited some of the state’s premier distilleries on the world-fa- mous Kentucky Bourbon Trail, first launched in 1999, by the Kentucky Distillers Association. While the vast majority of Kentucky Bourbon comes from the epon- ymous Bourbon County, a so-called “wet” county, east of Lexington, recent changes in the state’s patchwork of alcohol laws have allowed some other localities the opportunity to climb on the Bourbon band- wagon. In 2011, the city of Radcliff, in Hardin County, some 34 miles south of Louisville, along with two nearby cities, Elizabethtown and Vine Grove, voted to approve the sale of alcohol, after being “dry” for RADCLIFF, KENTUCKY AT A GLANCE RADCLIFF, KENTUCKY WHAT: A city of 22,500 WHERE: Hardin County in the central part of the state WEBSITE: www.radcliff.org nearly a century,when national prohibition laws were first promulgated. Incorporated in 1956, Radcliff was originally settled in 1919,when Horace McCullum subdivided lots alongWilson Avenue and sold them at auction to the highest bidder.McCullum named the new community after Major William Radcliffe, head of the Quartermaster Corps at the newly established Camp Henry Knox.The next significant step in Radcliff’s history took place during the 1930s,when Fort Knox expanded and dislocated the towns of Stithton and New Stithton, causing various residents and businesses of those communities to move to Radcliff. DuringWorldWar II, thousands of soldiers trained at Fort Knox and spent their leisure hours at the USO in Radcliff, and today, the city’s economy is still largely dominated by the Fort KnoxArmy Post. But since Radcliff has become a wet city,Mayor Mike Weaver has embarked upon a new plan which he believes will help grow the city’s stature as well as its economy.“Every city will not be able to attract the industry that every city would like,”he explains. “But, I believe that every city has a niche and they just need to go for it.When it comes to economic development and attracting a big industry,we don’t have some of the key components that you have to