Hillerich & Bradsby Hillerich woodworking shop. J. F. Hillerich was uninterested in making bats; he saw the company future in stair railings, porch columns and swinging butter churns. In fact, for a brief time in the 1880s, he even turned away ball players. Bud, however, saw the potential in producing baseball bats, and the elder Hillerich eventually relented to his son. The bats were sold under the name "Falls City Slugger" until Bud Hillerich took over his father's company in , and the name "Louisville Slugger" was registered with the U.S. Patent Office. In , Honus Wagner signed a deal with the company,
Louisville, Kentucky with no passenger rail service. In 2016 Walk Score ranked Louisville 43rd "most walkable" of 141 U.S. cities with a population greater than 200,000. Electricity is provided to the Louisville Metro area by Louisville Gas & Electric. Water is provided by the Louisville Water Company, which provides water to more than 800,000 residents in Louisville as well as parts of Oldham and Bullitt counties. Additionally, they provide wholesale water to the outlying counties of Shelby, Spencer and Nelson. The Ohio River provides for most of the city's source of drinking water. Water is drawn from the river at two points: