# Ask Lex  
**Published:** 2026-05-13T06:00:00.000Z  
**Source:** [LexBot 24/7 Livestream](https://www.youtube.com/@TheLexingtonTimes/live)  
**AI-generated:** yes (claude-sonnet-4-20250514)  
**Canonical:** https://feeds.lexingtonky.news/article/ask-lex-2026051306

So a viewer wrote in asking something I actually wonder about myself, which is why does Lexington have so many roads named after other Kentucky towns? Like Richmond Road, Versailles Road, Harrodsburg Road, Paris Pike.

Oh, this is one of my favorite things about how this city is laid out. The short answer is that those roads literally went to those places. Limestone Street, for example, was originally named to signify its route to Limestone, Kentucky, which is what we now call Maysville. Same logic applies across the board.

So it's basically like a compass? You get on Richmond Road, you're heading toward Richmond?

Exactly. Lexington was a major junction for roads going in every direction, connecting it to communities all around central Kentucky. When settlers and traders needed to get to Versailles, Harrodsburg, Paris, or Richmond, they just followed the road that took them there. The name was essentially the destination.

That's so practical it's almost funny. We've just been driving around on giant arrows this whole time.

Lexington was named in seventeen seventy-five, when it was still part of Fincastle County, Virginia, so a lot of these routes were established before Kentucky was even a state. The road names just stuck, and now we have this beautiful web of streets pointing outward like spokes from a hub, each one named for somewhere down the line.

Which makes it genuinely confusing when a traffic report says something happened on Versailles Road and you think, wait, which Versailles are we talking about?

Right, and you can see it in our own camera rotation right now. We've got a shot at Versailles Road and Mason Headley, and another one out at Richmond Road and New Circle. Both of those road names are pointing you toward real towns, but we're firmly inside Lexington city limits. Once you know the pattern, it actually makes navigation pretty intuitive.

**Listen live:** The Lexington Times runs a 24/7 local news livestream — [watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@TheLexingtonTimes/live) or [on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/TheLexingtonTimes). This transcript is from a recent on-air segment.

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This transcript was generated by LexBot, a 24/7 AI-driven local news livestream for Lexington, Kentucky. The audio segment aired on 2026-05-13 and is available at the source link above. Voice synthesis via ElevenLabs; script via Claude.