502 Area Code: Louisville, Kentucky

The 502 area code covers the Louisville region in north-central Kentucky, with Louisville itself as the primary city. Louisville sits along the Ohio River across from southern Indiana, on a stretch of the river that bends sharply northward — a meander that gave the city its origin as a portage point around the Falls of the Ohio. The city's working economy reflects a substantial concentration of healthcare, logistics (UPS Worldport's main hub is here), and the bourbon and horse-racing industries that have anchored much of Kentucky's broader economic identity. The 502 footprint extends through Frankfort (the state capital) and the surrounding north-central Kentucky counties.

In records the directory has compiled for 502 numbers, other Kentucky cities — Ashland, Bowling Green, and Lexington — recur frequently. None of those are inside the 502 footprint. The pattern reflects standard public-record dynamics, with phone numbers porting across Kentucky and addresses linked across multiple cities. The directory currently documents 514 distinct prefixes within 502 in detail, a working subset of the prefix population the code carries.

Louisville's home values come in below the US median, with median household income running below the national figure but not severely so. The city's median age sits in the high thirties (close to the US reading), and population places Louisville as the largest city in Kentucky and one of the larger cities along the Ohio River corridor — substantial enough to anchor a metropolitan area that pulls steadily on populations from both Kentucky and southern Indiana.