Russell is a home rule-class city on the south bank of the Ohio River in Greenup County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 3,380 as of the 2010 census, down from 3,645 in 2000. Russell is a suburb of Ashland and allowance of the Huntington-Ashland-Ironton metropolitan area. It has near economic affiliations subsequently its neighbors, Ashland and Flatwoods in Kentucky and Ironton, Ohio.

The hilly site close the confluence of White Oak Creek and the Ohio was selected by buccaneer Jeff Moore in 1823 in order to provide sponsorship for his camp neighboring attacks by local American Indian tribes.^{[dubious – discuss]} In 1829, James E. McDowell, William Lindsay Poage, and his brother erected an iron furnace; they named the foundry and the community that grew up a propos it “Amanda Furnace” after William’s infant daughter. The furnace ceased operation in 1861.

John Russell and his Means and Russell Iron Company purchased the land of the gift city counter to Amanda Hill from the Poage brothers. They laid out and normal the town of Riverview in 1869 in expectation of an innovation of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad westward from Huntington, West Virginia, to Cincinnati, Ohio. Ferry benefits to Ohio began in 1870, local landowners very to rename the community after its founder in 1873, and the city was formally incorporated under the name “Russell” in 1874. The customary C&O spur did not arrive until 1889 but, when it did, it build up a railyard, roundhouse, and shops and the city grew quickly. The city celebrates this imitate with the annual “Russell Railroad Days” each August.

Numerous disasters limited the city’s growth. The Ohio River flooded the city in 1884, smallpox struck in 1901, and a blaze consumed downtown and the city hall in 1903. In 1905, it was still the largest city in Greenup County, but the Ohio flooded over in 1913 and 1937. The 1937 flood affected whatever but 30 homes, and on peak of 500 people were motivated to shelter in C&O boxcars and cabooses until the waters receded. Despite the success of a bridge to Ironton in 1922 and a floodwall in 1950, Russell was no longer the county’s largest municipality by the mid-1950s.