Maysville is a city in and the county seat of Mason County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 8,993 at the 2000 census, making it the fiftieth largest city in Kentucky by population. Maysville is on the Ohio River, 66 miles northeast of Lexington. It is the principal city of the Maysville Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Mason and Lewis counties. Two bridges cross the Ohio River from Maysville to Aberdeen, Ohio: the Simon Kenton Memorial Bridge built in 1931, and the William H. Harsha Bridge built in 2001. Maysville was historically important in the settlement of the Kentucky bluegrass region. Frontiersmen Simon Kenton and Daniel Boone were among its founders. Later Maysville was an important port for the northeastern section of the state, exporting the region's production of hemp and tobacco. It was once a center of wrought-iron manufacture, sending fancy ironwork down the Ohio to decorate the buildings of New Orleans, Louisiana. Other small manufacturers located early in Maysville, and manufacture remains an important part of the modern economy. Under the early leadership of Henry Means Walker, for most of the twentieth century Maysville was home to one of the largest tobacco auction warehouse systems in the world. Maysville was an important stop on the Underground Railroad, as the free state of Ohio was just across the river. Harriet Beecher Stowe visited the area in 1833 and witnessed a slave auction in front of the county court house in Washington, Kentucky (then the county seat, since annexed to Maysville). Stowe included the scene in her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852. The Rosemary Clooney Music Festival, founded by the singer in 1999 to benefit the restoration of the Russell Theater, is held in Maysville each year. Past performers at the festival include Debby Boone, Rita Coolidge, Michael Feinstein, Roberta Flack, Alison Krauss, The Pointer Sisters, and Linda Ronstadt. WFTM-AM and WFTM-FM are the primary local radio stations in Maysville. The AM station plays adult standards, and the FM plays adult contemporary music.