Bowling Green

City and administrative headquarters of Warren County, west-central Kentucky, on the Barren River, 105 km/65 mi northeast of Nashville, Tennessee; population (2000) 49,000. An important market for tobacco, tomatoes, corn, and livestock, it also has meatpacking, clothing, car parts and assembly, and other industries. Western Kentucky University (1906) is here.

Settled in 1780, it was by the mid-1800s a rail and river transportation centre. It was the Confederate state capital until 1862, when Union forces took control.

Bowling Green

Oldest park in New York City, in lower Manhattan, just north of the Battery (the southern end of Manhattan Island). The Dutch and later the English bowled on the spot, which is at the south end of Broadway, and in the 1730s an oval was leased to a private group and fenced off.

Tradition holds it as the site of the Dutch colonial administrator Peter Minuit's trade with natives that obtained Manhattan in exchange for trinkets.

Bowling Green

City and administrative headquarters of Wood County, northwest Ohio, 32 km/20 mi southwest of Toledo; population (1990) 28,200. It is a trading centre for the surrounding dairy, livestock, and vegetable farming area, and there are meat packing and light manufacturing industries. It is the seat of Bowling Green State University (1910).

Settled in 1832, the city experienced brief but rapid industrial growth after a gusher oil well was struck in 1886.