Jessamine County calls itself Lexington's southern neighbour, and it has grown like one. Nicholasville and Wilmore have filled with new subdivisions, while the south of the county still runs down to the Kentucky River. This page covers the towns we work in, why karst matters more here than most homeowners realise, and what we know, and do not know, about the local permits.
Nicholasville and its subdivisions along the US 27 corridor, Wilmore, Keene, and the rural roads down toward Camp Nelson and the river. If you are anywhere in the county, send the address.
Census counts put the county at about 39,000 people in 2000 and close to 53,000 by 2020. Growth like that means a lot of driveways laid in the same two decades, many now at the age where the original surface has gone grey and the first cracks have opened at the garage and the street. That is the ideal moment to seal: the asphalt is still sound, and every year a crack stays open costs more to put right.
The whole Bluegrass sits on limestone that dissolves into sinkholes, springs and caves, and Jessamine is no exception. Nicholasville's subdivision regulations put it bluntly: sinkholes, active or inactive, are not to be treated as part of the storm drainage system and are not to be enlarged or opened.
That has two practical consequences for driveway work. First, where a drive's runoff goes matters. Regrading or paving that sends water toward a sinkhole is the wrong answer, and a paving plan here starts by finding where water leaves the drive now and where it would go after. Second, a low spot that keeps settling after it has been patched may be a sinkhole working underneath rather than a failed base. We do not pave over that; we tell you what we see and it gets looked at properly first.
Sealing itself is done with the same care about water. Crack filling and sealer are kept on the asphalt, cleanup water is not washed into drains or low ground, and a coat is not applied with rain on the way.
Jessamine carries more history than its size suggests. Camp Nelson, now a National Monument outside Nicholasville, began as a Union army supply depot in April 1863 and became a major recruiting and training centre for United States Colored Troops and a refuge for their families. In Wilmore, Asbury University has been teaching since 1890. For us that mostly shows up in the housing: Wilmore and old Nicholasville have older homes with narrow drives and mature trees, which means careful hand work at the edges and slower cures in the shade, while the newer subdivisions have wide, open drives in full sun.
Nicholasville taxes business done in the city, one percent of net profits and one and a half percent of wages, and requires every business working there to file a return and a business registration form. The county's occupational tax office handles new business registration outside the city, and Wilmore has its own business license application.
Driveway entrance permits are a different story. Neither the county road department nor the City of Wilmore publishes an entrance permit process online, and we could not read Nicholasville's code on the subject. So we do not guess: before any work at a street or road, we call the city or the county road department and put the answer on your quote. Where a drive joins a state route, the permit is the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet's, through its District 7 office in Lexington, which covers Jessamine.
Sealing, crack filling and patching that stay on your property involve no right-of-way permit at all.
Yes. Sealing does not change where water goes. We keep material and rinse water away from it, and if the drive's edge nearest it has started to drop, we say so before quoting.
Check your covenants. Some associations have rules about work hours, signs or the look of driveways, and sealer turns a drive black again. If yours needs a form, we can give you the scope and dates to attach to it.
Yes, and it is easier for everyone on the street: one set of cones and one curing window. Each household gets and pays its own quote.
Probably not. If the surface is still firm, crack filling and a coat of sealer are exactly what it needs. If parts have broken up, those get patched first.
Next door: Fayette County to the north, Woodford to the west and Madison across the river to the east.
