But it is typical, too, of the part of the commonwealth left out of tourism brochures - unpaved roads, no telephones, uneducated people.
That's the Owen County where Betty Mae Williams lived and died.
In a trailer out on Calendar Road between tiny Glencoe and unincorporated Jonesville, the 27-year-old woman and her little girl became the victims last Sunday of a horrific beating that left the mother dead and the child facing months of hospitalization.
The attack attracted more attention to this rural community than it has seen in years, mostly scrutiny from outsiders who can't fathom a place where people bury their relatives in their back yards.
That kind of thing doesn't faze Teddy Vinegar. The retired farmer has lived here all of his 88 years. He philosophizes as he looks out over his 40-some acres, sitting outside the new storage building he uses as a house.
''There's a little of every kind of people here,'' he says. ''Most of 'em are pretty nice. But I reckon a lot of folks might not understand us.''
Charged with murder in Ms. Williams' death is Temothy Smith. He's 22.
Like all the boys in Owen County High School's Class of '95, he rented a black tuxedo for his senior picture. Unlike most, however, he appears only once in the annual, in the class list. No sports, no clubs.
The yearbook is titled Expect the Unexpected.
He beat Ms. Williams' head severely, authorities say, and slit her throat from ear to ear. They had a brief relationship, a friend said, but it had been over for several months.
As for Ms. Williams' 8-year-old daughter, Mr. Smith cut her throat, too.
People in and around Owenton don't seem to know much about Mr. Smith. The police are familiar with him, though not for anything violent. He spent seven weekends in jail a couple of years ago for damaging the Elsmere Sportsmen's Club.
He worked as a laborer for a Frankfort temporary service until he was arrested about sunrise Monday. He was a suspect because the little girl he left for dead wasn't. She told police exactly whom to look for. He'll be back in court Thursday.
No phone at trailer
Ms. Williams and the little girl were living in the trailer while they waited for her boyfriend, John Marcum, to get out of jail next month. They planned to get married.
She didn't have a phone. Some people don't in Owen County.
Tom Olds, the county judge-executive, has been wondering since the gruesome crime how different things might have turned out if the trailer had a phone. Maybe the child could have dialed for help. It might have been the best use yet of the 911 system the county started using just a little over a year ago.
This should be a hotbed of business and industry, given its spot almost exactly in the middle of the ''Golden Triangle'' - what state officials call the area bounded by Northern Kentucky, Lexington and Louisville. That would be the case - if you could get to interstates easily. U.S. 127 has been partially widened and rebuilt, but not completely, not north of the city.
The unemployment rate's about 3.5 percent to 4 percent. That's lower than the national average. But at least half of Owen's workers have to leave the county to work.
Owen County has its aces, too. It's pretty. People are exceedingly friendly. And you don't have to lock your doors.
''I moved back because I did not want to raise my kids in an urban area,'' Mr. Olds said of his 1965 return after seven years in Florence. ''That's what Owen County offers. People want that.''
Child well cared for
The rumors about Ms. Williams are beginning to make Joel Griffith angry - Did she do drugs? Was her killer coming to look for drugs? Which man was she with, and when?
He is a supervisor with the county's social services office, a place where he and caseworkers say they learned that Ms. Williams and her little girl loved each other very much. The girl was always well taken care of and seemed happy.
''I don't care what her previous lifestyle was,'' he said, not angrily, but close to it. ''This woman got married at what, 15, and had a child soon after. So there are obviously some strengths here.'' It would be his job, he points out, to take the child away - had there been a need for that.
''I just think we have to be careful about some of the things that are being said. It almost becomes a blaming issue. And that has no place here.''
The little girl who just turned 8 in June may now go to live with her maternal grandmother, Jackie Murphy. Though she says she hasn't spent much time with the child recently she hopes to get custody.
That would add another mouth to feed at her Dry Ridge home, where the youngest four of her own 13 children still live. The youngest of them is only 12.
This is the woman who was a baby herself when she started having babies. Ms. Williams was her second-born when she arrived prematurely in June 1970. Mrs. Murphy was 15 then. Because she didn't have much money, she sent Ms. Williams to live with a grandmother.
Ms. Williams dropped out of school before finishing the eighth grade. She got married to Dion Williams a short time after.
Aside from five misdemeanor and traffic arrests in 1993, she never had much trouble with the law.
In June of that year, she did three days in the Carroll County regional jail for slashing a man's tire.
On a paper she had to sign to get a free lawyer, she said she and Dion lived on $600 he made and $228 she got in Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Their rent was $100. On a later version, she said her husband wasn't working anymore.
The court system didn't see her again after 1993.
By accounts from her family and friends, Ms. Williams was getting her life together - no small feat for a woman who lost a full-term baby boy last winter and whose estranged husband killed himself with a shotgun last month.
She sold a bull shortly before she died, using the little over $300 she earned to buy her daughter school clothes and supplies. Three days before her death, she and the little girl proudly brought the purchases to show neighbor Barbara Buis.
''She was getting it together, she really was,'' Mrs. Buis said. ''She'd finally met someone who was going to treat her right.''
Place of survivors
The 88-year-old Mr. Vinegar heard about Ms. Williams' death on the TV news - ''worse than sad,'' he said. He never met her. But he understands her life.
''I guess she was like me, in a way,'' he said. ''Just somebody who was trying to get along.''
He's the last person to kill somebody in Owen County. It'll be two years next month since he fired a 12-gauge shotgun at his son-in-law's chest. He admitted he shot Bob Rutherford and said it was because he had stolen $600 from him.
Sentenced to four years in prison for reckless homicide, he got out last November after less than eight weeks. That's because he's old and his doctor said he was sick.
He once thought about leaving Owen County for someplace different. But his family was there, and he didn't have much money.
''It takes money to do things,'' he said. ''I don't have a Ph.D., you know, so I had to do whatever I could.
''You stay where you can survive.''
Previous stories
OFFERS OF HELP FLOW TO GIRL ORPHANED BY ATTACK Aug. 14, 1997
8-YEAR-OLD: HE KILLED MY MOTHER Aug. 13, 1997
DAUGHTER MAY HAVE SEEN MOTHER'S KILLER Aug. 12, 1997
