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Kentucky was used as sacred hunting grounds by roving bands of Shawnee and others. As early as 1750 there were no known permanent Native settlements. After 1770, settlers from Virginia and North Carolina came through the Cumberland Gap, and Kentucky grew rapidly as the first settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains were founded.

After the American Revolution, the counties of Virginia beyond the Appalachian Mountains became known as Kentucky County. Eventually, the residents of Kentucky County petitioned for a separation from Virginia. Ten constitutional conventions were held in the Constitution Square Courthouse in Danville between 1784 and 1792. In 1790, Kentucky's delegates accepted Virginia's terms of separation, and a state constitution was drafted at the final convention in April 1792. On June 1, 1792, Kentucky became the fifteenth state to be admitted to the union and Isaac Shelby, a military veteran from Virginia, was elected the first Governor of the Commonwealth Of Kentucky.

While remaining loyal to the Union, Kentucky was a border state during the American Civil War. The state did not secede, and was officially neutral until a new legislature took office on August 5, 1861 with strong Union sympathies. The Confederates entered the state during the "Kentucky Campaign" of Generals Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith in 1862. Bragg's retreat following the Battle of Perryville left the state under the control of the Union Army for the remainder of the war. The state then abandoned neutrality, and publicly sided with the Union. Southern sympathizers attempted to establish an alternative state government with the goal of secession but failed to displace the legitimate government in Frankfort.