Towns half way between Ft. Knox and Louisville (Pleasure Ridge Park, Valley Station: middle-class, appointed)

[3onthemove]

Hello. We are a military family and one of relocation cities may be Louisville, KY. This might be our last move before my husband wants to retire. His duty station would be in Louisville, but we would be considering retiring and trying to find jobs on Ft. Knox. We are looking for an area that wouldn't be too far between both areas, about an 1/2 hour or so drive is okay.
We love country living, and I like rolling hills. We would like to buy a place with several acres in the future as I am a horse lover and want to own a horse again, ride 4-wheelers, etc. Any suggestions would be great!

Debbie

[EclecticEars]

Originally Posted by 3onthemove

Hello. We are a military family and one of relocation cities may be Louisville, KY. This might be our last move before my husband wants to retire. His duty station would be in Louisville, but we would be considering retiring and trying to find jobs on Ft. Knox. We are looking for an area that wouldn't be too far between both areas, about an 1/2 hour or so drive is okay.
We love country living, and I like rolling hills. We would like to buy a place with several acres in the future as I am a horse lover and want to own a horse again, ride 4-wheelers, etc. Any suggestions would be great!

Debbie

Hmmmmm...

Muldraugh, West Point, Kosmosdale, Fairdale, and Pleasure Ridge Park are all on a 15-20 mile stretch of Dixie Highway (US 31W/60) between Fort Knox and what's commonly known as Louisville. However, these are frankly fairly run down-looking communities that I would not choose to live in at all (although PRP and Fairdale have some decent areas within).

Bullitt County also is the 90-degree angle, if you will. You can drive west along KY 44 from Shepherdsville to West Point and be at Fort Knox shortly thereafter, although KY 44 can be kinda creepy to drive at night (think Deliverance) and I'm pretty sure some of it floods after really heavy rain. You can drive to Louisville using I-65 from Shepherdsville or US 31E from Mt. Washington. The catch: Mt. Washington is well across the county from the Fort Knox end, so that means it will be at minimum 35 minutes to Fort Knox or downtown Louisville (in not-stop-and-go traffic), and Mt. W. is the ONLY town in the county that I'd consider nice. Shepherdsville, on the other hand, used to have a strip club next to its board of education office and high school; don't know if that's still the case.

Here's the catch: ever since Louisville and Jefferson County merged governments in 2003, the city and county are coterminous (although some jurisdictions farther east in the county operate with their own autonomy, but that's for a whole other thread). So, Fairdale and PRP are 25-30 minutes from downtown Louisville, but since they are in Jefferson County, they are Louisville.

So, you can live in the nice parts of PRP and Fairdale, or suck it up and live in Mt. W. or Meade County (nice, fairly undeveloped rural county adjacent to Ft. Knox). Or just do what a lot of transplants to Ft. Knox jobs do and live in Elizabethtown (20 min. to Ft. Knox., 45 min. to Louisville), a nice small city in its own right.

[3onthemove]

Thank you! I was really hoping to avoid long commutes, but I think that with what we are looking for and considering there won't be a way around it until he retires so we can move closer to Ft. Knox. I know most of the jobs I would look at would be in Louisville too. I know we would want to try to buy a house before he retires so we will just have to suck it up and make a longer drive for a year or two. Another area we are considering is Topeka, KS which has better locations for what we want for both of our jobs, but it's farther away from our aging families.

Thanks again for the suggestions.

[Dayton Sux]

Valley Station

Not metioned above, but you also want to look in the eastern parts of Valley Station (East of Dixie Highway), off of Stonestreet Road, Blevins Gap Road (more for large lot country living) and Old Third Street Road. Nicer subdivisions here are off of Arnoldtown Road (some nice new things off Arnoldtown), E. Pages Lane, Hiview, Windsor Forest, Prarie Village, Stoneridge (?), etc. Also some newer housing off of Deering Road.

This part of Valley Station used to get a lot of military relocatees and retirees. Housing stock ranges from postwar ranches, two stories, and split levels of various sizes& styles to things built in the 1980s, 90s, 00s. There was a small building boom in this area starting in the late 1980s filling in vacant land, so you can get some newer product here.

The older stuff is fairly well kept up in the more middle-class subdivisions. And it does go subdivision by subdivision....one plat might be nicer than the other.

If you like a sort of wooded hills/farms in the hollows, hill country feel, there are a lot of minifarms and large lot housing off of the backrounds north of the aformentioned Route 44. THis country straddles the Bullit/Jefferson county line. These roads would be the following:

Knob Creek Road
Weavers Run Rd
Pendelton Road/Bearcamp Road.
Pauleys Gap Road
Scotts Gap Road
Blevins Gap Road

....a mix of houses, even some McMansions, on these roads. Popular with folks who like more country-life, but still close to town. Quite a bit of the higher hills on the Jefferson County/Louisville side is owned by the county & managed as a big forest preserve (Jefferson Memorial Forest).

This Valley Station area, in general, does not appeal to trendy/hipster/yuppie types. You will find a lot of people with good incomes stay in this area since they grew up here, and like the unpretentious, "country" feel, so they stay even tho their incomes and jobs would make the East End (the most desirable part of Louisville) affordable.

And relocatees who prioritize shorter commutes, cheaper housing costs, and more familiy time will locate here, if work is nearby, vs the more fashionable (but also expensive and distant) East End.

So it depends on what you want.

[3onthemove]

Thank you, Dayton Sux. That was a very informative post. And we definitely love the hills/mountains and that would be ideal views for me. It looks like that would be a very viable option for us. I was very disappointed when I found out there was no gate entrance on base on the Shepherdsville side so this is great!

Debbie

[Dayton Sux]

^
Your welcome! As was said before, you also want to look at Fairdale. A lot of mini-farms in Fairdale, and that hill country I mentioned above (locally known as "The Knobs") continues into Fairdale, which does have an exit off the Gene Snyder Freeway...thus easy drive to US 31W/Dixie Hwy, and then south to Ft Knox.

Roads in Fairdale to look at:

Keys Ferry Road
Mitchell Hill Road
Jefferson Hill Road (tho this is sort of rough)
Penile Road
Top Hill Road
Holsclaw Hill Road
Lonesome Hollow Road

@@@@

You can take a quick look at this countryside via google maps terrain and satellite features.....

[johnsonkk]

A good mix is just across the Jefferson (Louisville) county line. There are subdivisions on 10 acre lots that allow horses but not.rift raft. A ten acre lot with home will be $1,000 in property taxes vs $3,500 in Louisville (no 10 acre lots). Zip.codes 40109 or 40165 are a couple examples. Mt Washington has to be more like an hour drive from office spaces on ft Knox. Same with Louisville. Be cautious of posts from people that have not lived in the area since Reagan left office.