24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Russell, KY

Russell is a home rule-class city on the south bank of the Ohio River in Greenup County, Kentucky, sitting directly across the river from Ironton, Ohio.

Russell is a suburb of Ashland and part of the Huntington-Ashland-Ironton metropolitan area, with downtown Ashland about 3 miles southeast via U.S. Route 23.

The 2020 census counted 3,744 residents in Russell.

The community began in 1829 as Amanda Furnace, an iron furnace settlement erected by James E. McDowell and William Lindsay Poage and his brother, who named the foundry for William's infant daughter Amanda; the furnace operated until 1861.

Ironmaster John Russell bought the land and laid out the town as Riverview in 1869 in expectation of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad; residents renamed the community Russell in his honor in 1873, and the city was formally incorporated on February 23, 1874.

When the C&O line finally arrived in 1889, the railroad built a railyard, roundhouse, and shops in Russell; the classification yard, now operated by CSX Transportation, was formerly the largest individually owned rail yard in the world.

Russell celebrates its railroad heritage with the annual Russell Railroad Days festival each August.

The Ohio River repeatedly flooded Russell, most devastatingly in 1937, when all but about 30 homes were affected and more than 500 people sheltered in C&O boxcars and cabooses until the water receded; a floodwall was completed in 1950.

A bridge across the Ohio to Ironton opened in 1922, and its replacement, the new Ironton-Russell Bridge, opened in 2016.

The Fortune 500 company Ashland Oil moved its headquarters to Russell in 1974 and stayed until relocating to Covington in 1999, and part of the Ashland Works steel plant stands within the city.