[1] Scott County is part of the Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Native Americans inhabited the Scott County area from perhaps 15,000 years ago.

One of the earliest settlers was John McClelland from Pennsylvania, who built McLelland's Fort overlooking the Georgetown spring.

Six years later, a new and permanent settlement was founded by Robert and Jemima Johnson, who built Johnson Station (later called Great Crossing), near the north fork of Elkhorn Creek, about five miles west of today's Georgetown.

Elijah Craig is also credited with founding the county's first classical school, the first sawmill, the first gristmill, the first fulling and paper mill, the first ropewalk, and (possibly) the area's first bourbon whiskey.

On December 27, 1787, edition of the Kentucky Gazette, he solicited scholars to study at an academy that would open in January 1788 "in Lebanon town," and would offer courses in Latin, Greek, and "such branches of the sciences as are usually taught in public seminaries."

Ten years later the school was absorbed by the Rittenhouse Academy, which was given by the state some 5,900 acres in Christian and Cumberland counties so that they might sell the land to benefit their endowment fund.

When Elder Barton Warren Stone (1772–1844), a founder of the Christian Churches movement during the Great Revival, moved to Georgetown in 1816 to become principal of Rittenhouse Academy, he found the community "notorious for its wickedness and irreligion.

On November 18, 1861, Scott County native George W. Johnson was elected the provisional Confederate governor of Kentucky.

[5] In 2019, voters in Scott County approved county-wide alcohol sales.

21.00% of all households were made up of individuals, and 7.00% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.