Bourbon Stock Yard Company Records, 1880-1995
Held by The Filson Historical Society
Creator: Bourbon Stock Yard Company
Title: Records, 1880-1995
Rights: For information regarding literary and copyright interest for these papers, contact the Curator of Special Collections.
Size of Collection: 1 volume, 2 folders (oversized)
Location Number: Mss.
Scope and Content Note
Collection consists of disparate material related to a prominent Louisville, Kentucky stock yard.
Folder 1 consists of miscellaneous material including a 1948 map of the stock yards, postcards, ink blotters from other companies, a 1926 appraisal of the stock yard land, company share certificates, market reports for 1873 and 1891, a single letter from Conrad Provision Company, and four 1995 round tags used to track dead live stock.
Volume 2 is the 1880 yearly financial and operating report for the Bourbon Stockyards.
Item 3 is a 1944 letter from D. X. Murphy Bro. Architect appraising the cost of the stock yard buildings.
Related Collections
Additional records are held by the University of Louisville. The University of Louisville Bourbon Stockyards collection contains the general business records of the company, including general correspondence, reports, publications, legal information, data from cattle shows, and materials related to the American Stockyard Association dating from approximately 1900 through the 1960s.
Historical Note
The Bourbon Stockyards, which began at the Bourbon House, a hotel for farmers located between Washington Street and Story Avenue in Louisville, was the oldest continuously operating stockyard in the United States. In 1864 a new facility closer to the railroad was built at Main and Johnson Streets. It was incorporated as Bourbon Stock Yard Company in 1875. By the late 1800s it included a modern public market with docks, offices, and other services allowing the company to dominate the Kentucky cattle market for the next century. In the first half of the 20th century the plant was expanded to correspond with the extension of the Louisville cattle market, but by mid-century the market declined due to a change from the railroad to trucking as the major mode of transportation. From the 1960s until the yards closed in 1999, improvements were made to better serve small local farmers.
– Historical note information gathered from the scope and content note of the Bourbon Stockyards Collection at the University of Louisville.
Folder List
Folder 1: Miscellaneous, 1873-1995
Volume 2: Yearly Financial and Operating Report, 1880
Item 3: Letter from D. X. Murphy & Bro., Architects, 1944
Subject Headings
Advertising – Kentucky – Louisville.
Bourbon Stock Yards Company – Maps.
Business enterprises – Kentucky – Louisville.
Cattle – Kentucky – Louisville.
D. X. Murphy & Bro., Architects (Louisville, Ky.)
Livestock – Kentucky – Louisville.
Stockyards – Kentucky – Louisville.
