Significant artifacts from these tribes and earlier peoples, including from mounds, have been found by white settlers and their descendants since the 1700s.

[9][10][11][8][12][13] Henderson has its roots in a small, block-wide strip of land high above the Ohio River, the site of the present-day Audubon Mill Park directly south of the city's riverfront boat dock.

A village on this site was called "Red Banks" because of the reddish clay soil of the bluffs overlooking the Ohio River.

[14] The future city was named after Richard Henderson, an eighteenth-century pioneer and land speculator, by his associates Samuel Hopkins and Thomas Allin.

On March 17, 1775, North Carolina judge Richard Henderson and his Transylvania Company had met with 1,200 Cherokee in a council at Sycamore Shoals (present-day Elizabethton, Tennessee) to purchase over 17,000,000 acres (69,000 km2) of land between the Ohio, Cumberland, and Kentucky rivers in present-day Kentucky and Tennessee to resell it to white settlers.

On November 16, 1792, resident Robert Simpson wrote to Alexander D. Orr in Lexington, requesting help to appoint a magistrate for Red Banks to deal with some of its 30 families he felt were of dubious (criminal) character.

During this period, the Red Banks settlement had gained notoriety as a frontier haven for westward-moving outlaws and their families.

[citation needed] Later, in 1797, Captain Young of Mercer County, Kentucky and the "Exterminators", a group of regulators under his leadership swiftly and violently drove out the remaining outlaw element in Red Banks.

[15] Samuel Hopkins and the surveyor Thomas Allin visited Red Banks in 1797 and laid out plans for the future town of Henderson.

[16] A distinguishing characteristic of the new town plan was unusually wide streets, reportedly to prevent a fire in one block from easily spreading to another.

Postcards from the era show long lines of horse- and mule-drawn wagons piled high with tobacco, waiting their turn to unload for shipment downriver.

[citation needed] Great Britain, however, imposed a high tariff on imported tobacco after the war, wrecking the county and city's export market.

Segments of Audubon and Weaverton were sometimes referred to as the "East End", which held the second-largest business area after downtown Henderson.

[citation needed] A workplace shooting occurred at an Atlantis Plastics factory in Henderson on June 25, 2008.

The gunman, 25-year-old Wesley Neal Higdon, shot and killed five people and critically injured a sixth person before taking his own life.

[18] The shooting is the worst in the history of Henderson County in terms of casualties, surpassing triple homicides occurring in 1799 and 1955.

"[21] In 1908 the Henderson area had high temperatures and a drought, which markedly reduced the flow of the Ohio River.

Henderson, on its bluff, was spared much of the damage that Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Evansville, Paducah and other river cities suffered.

The Henderson Breakfast Lions Club holds the Tri-Fest, a street festival that raises funds for non-profit organizations, in mid-April each year.

Past performers have included Bill Monroe, Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss and Union Station, Ricky Skaggs, John Hartford, Glen Campbell, and other notable Bluegrass artists.

[30][31] The Henderson Lions Club Arts and Crafts Festival is a large event that sees as many as 10,000 visitors each year.

[39] Henderson is served by one local daily newspaper, The Gleaner, as well as the metro edition of the Evansville Courier & Press.

[45] The horse betting scene in Traveller starring Bill Paxton, Mark Wahlberg and Julianna Margulies was filmed at Ellis Park in 1995.