Ashland is a house rule-class city in Boyd County, Kentucky, United States. The largest city in Boyd County, Ashland is located upon a southern bank of the Ohio River at the state be close to with Ohio and near West Virginia. The population was 21,625 at the 2020 census. Ashland is a principal city of the Huntington-Ashland metropolitan area, referred to locally as the “Tri-State area”, home to 359,862 residents as of 2020. Ashland serves as an important economic and medical middle for northeastern Kentucky.

Ashland dates incite to the migration of the Poage family from the Shenandoah Valley via the Cumberland Gap in 1786. They erected a homestead along the Ohio River and named it Poage’s Landing. Also called Poage Settlement, the community that developed around it remained an extended-family affair until the mid-19th century. In 1854, the city publish was misrepresented to Ashland, after Henry Clay’s Lexington land and to reflect the city’s growing industrial base. The city’s at the forefront industrial buildup was a upshot of the Ohio Valley’s pig iron industry and, particularly, the 1854 charter of the Kentucky Iron, Coal, and Manufacturing Company by the Kentucky General Assembly. The city was formally incorporated by the General Assembly two years higher in 1856. Major industrial employers in the first half of the 20th century included Armco, Ashland Oil and Refining Company, the C&O Railroad, Allied Chemical & Dye Company’s Semet Solvay, and Mansbach Steel.

Ashland is located at 38°27′50″N 82°38′30″W / 38.464017°N 82.641571°W / 38.464017; -82.641571 (38.464017, −82.641571). It lies within the ecoregion of the Western Allegheny Plateau.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total Place of 10.8 square miles (27.9 km), of which 10.7 square miles (27.8 km²) is land and 0.039 square miles (0.1 km), or 0.30%, is water.