Elizabethtown, where the Western Kentucky Parkway begins its western route, is also located along I-65 as well as the Bluegrass Parkway, which runs through Lexington. So, while the smaller communities have seen some impact from the parkway, those meager results have done little more to ease the sting felt in Owensboro and Henderson in having been passed over. Henderson County Judge-Executive Lanny Watkins said the lack of a highway is the only thing that has kept the area from more explosive growth. I think that it is sad. We are. . . .
Location is everything, but good transportation is essential.
My God, just look at the growth Bowling Green has had, in just the buildings they have built. It would have just been phenomenal, you couldn't have stopped the growth that would have happened. Hawesville, and other older established cities had no major thoroughfare and just died on the vine. In the end, the legacy of the parkway may be that it furthered, on the one hand, Owensboro's isolation, while on the other giving the communities along its path little on which they could easily capitalize.