Mapping History

Mapping History of Kenton County

• 1914:  Kenton County Fiscal court contracts with the O’Niell Map and Construction company to produce what is titled the "Official Map of Kenton County" (JPG).
• 1949:  Kentucky Revenue Cabinet Mandates through Kentucky Revised Statutes (KRS):132.670 (PDF) that the Department of Revenue shall prepare detailed maps identifying every parcel of real property within each county of the state.
• 1980:  Kentucky Revenue Cabinet flew the county and produced 400 scale orthographic Blueline paper Aerial Maps (JPG).  The Property Valuation Administrator’s Office (PVA) collected data and mapped on the blueline paper maps.  When a map was completed it was sent back to the Revenue Cabinet to be "Inked" (the process of converting the pencil drawn lines into an ink copy).  The maps were then sent back to the PVA office for updating.
• 1985:  Northern Kentucky Area Planning Commission contracted with the GRW Company to fly the county and capture orthographic photography and planimetric data.  The data included roads, buildings and topographic data.  The planimetric data was then transferred to Mylar Sepia film format (JPG).  The sepias were sent to the Kentucky Revenue Cabinet where 30% of the county (southern portion) that was mapped on the Blue line Aerial paper maps was transferred to the Mylar Sepia format.
• 1986:  The Kenton County Property Valuation office partnered with the Northern Kentucky Area Planning Commission.
• 1989:  Northern Kentucky Area Planning Commission printed Mylar maps for the PVA office.  There were 179 map sheets that made up Kenton County.  The sepia/ Mylar maps represented a rectangle piece of ground 5,000 by 7,000 feet or 3,500,000 square feet.
• 1990:  The Kenton County Property Valuation office, with a grant from the Kentucky Revenue Cabinet, hired a team of 4 persons to finish mapping Kenton County.
• 1996:  The Kenton County Property Valuation office created its own in-house Geographic Information System (GIS) network of computers to capture data into the GIS system.  The data was then available for immediate use within the office.  The Assessment personnel are able to use the data to aid in the assessment of property.
• 2000:  The Kenton County Property Valuation mapping department starts to remap the county using Coordinate Geometry to increase the accuracy of the data and to capture bearings and distances (JPG) for annotation purposes.
• 2008:  The Kenton County Property Valuation office contracts with Pictometry to purchase their Orthographic and Oblique imagery.  This imagery is captured at 4" pixels enabling much more accurate placement of parcel lines in the GIS.
• 2012:  To date, the mapping department has re-mapped (using Coordinate Geometry) the entire county.
• 2014:  The Kenton County PVA Office contracts for two additional flights - 2014 and 2016 - using 3” pixels.
• 2018:  The PVA Office partners up with the LINK-GIS....
• 2021:  The PVA Office continues to fly all of Kenton County every two years.  Due to huge advances in technology, the imagery is now captured at approximately .75” pixels, tremendously increasing the Office’s capability to apply assessments in a fair and equitable manner.