Elsmere is a home rule-class city in

Kenton County Kenton County is a county located in the northern part of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. As of the 2020 census, the population was 169,064, making it the third most populous county in Kentucky (behind Jefferson County and Fayette County). I ...

Kentucky Kentucky (, ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the ...

, in the United States. The population was 9,159 at the 2020 census.

Geography

Elsmere is located in western Kenton County and is bordered to the north and east by Erlanger, to the south by

Independence Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state, in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the status of ...

, and to the west by

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

in Boone County. The

Dixie Highway Dixie Highway was a United States auto trail first planned in 1914 to connect the Midwest with the South. It was part of a system and was expanded from an earlier Miami to Montreal highway. The final system is better understood as a network o ...

(U.S. Routes 25, 42, and 127) forms the northern border of the city and leads northeast to Covington and southwest to the center of Florence. According to the

United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau, officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the Federal statistical system, U.S. federal statistical system, responsible for producing data about the American people and American economy, econ ...

, Elsmere has a total area of , of which , or 0.73%, are water.

History

The community was first settled in 1885 as "South Erlanger". Elsmere has historically been a largely African-American city, and originally had an African-American school house Known as the Dunbar School on Spring Street. Elsmere also had an African-American baseball team. There is also a park on Capitol Avenue named after Rosella Porterfield, who taught at the Historic Dunbar School. Elsmere organized as a city in 1896, renamed after Elsmere Avenue in

Norwood, Ohio Norwood is the third most populous city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and an enclave of the larger city of Cincinnati. The population was 19,043 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Originally settled as an early suburb of ...

, the hometown of one of its founders.

Government

In 1998, Billy Bradford was elected mayor of Elsmere, the first

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

mayor elected in northern Kentucky. He served 12 years (three terms), and now serves as a member of the city council. The current mayor is Marty Lenhof.

Economy

Regal Beloit Regal Rexnord Corporation is a manufacturer of electric motors and power transmission components based in Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The company has manufacturing, sales, and service facilities throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, ...

(formerly Emerson Power Transmission) and

L'Oréal L'Oréal S.A. () is a French multinational personal care corporation registered in Paris

have facilities in an unincorporated pocket of Kenton County surrounded by Elsmere. Portions of Elsmere have a

mailing address. Mazak's North American headquarters are in Elsmere.

Education

Portions of the cities of Elsmere and adjacent Erlanger share a public school system: Erlanger/Elsmere Independent School District. The following schools are shared by the areas of the two cities within the Erlanger/Elsmere school district: ;Primary schools *Arnett Elementary School *Howell Elementary School *Lindeman Elementary School *Miles Elementary School *Tichenor Middle School ;Secondary schools * Lloyd Memorial High School A portion of Elsmere is in the

Kenton County School District The Kenton County School District (the definite article is part of the district's official name) is a local education agency headquartered in Ft. Wright, Kentucky and is the public school system for Kenton County outside of the areas within I ...

Demographics

According to the 2010 U.S. census, there were 8,451 people, 2,992 households, and 2,131 families residing in the city. The racial makeup was 61.0%

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

, 22.2%

black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...

, 0.4% Native American, 0.4%

Asian American Asian Americans are Americans with ancestry from the continent of Asia (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of those immigrants). Although this term had historically been used fo ...

, 0.2%

Native Hawaiian Native Hawaiians (also known as Indigenous Hawaiians, Kānaka Maoli, Aboriginal Hawaiians, or simply Hawaiians; , , , and ) are the Indigenous peoples of Oceania, Indigenous Polynesians, Polynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaiʻi was set ...

or other

Pacific Islander Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, Pacificans, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the list of islands in the Pacific Ocean, Pacific Islands. As an ethnic group, ethnic/race (human categorization), racial term, it is used to describe th ...

, 4.2% some other race, and 3.4% two or more races. 8.2% of the population were

Hispanic or Latino ''Hispanic'' and '' Latino'' are ethnonyms used to refer collectively to the inhabitants of the United States who are of Spanish or Latin American ancestry (). While many use the terms interchangeably, for example, the United States Census Bureau ...

of any race.

References

External links

Official website

{{authority control Cities in Kentucky Cities in Kenton County, Kentucky