Covington, Kentucky, Northern Kentucky's largest city, is located at the confluence of the Ohio and Licking Rivers, directly across from Cincinnati. Within a few years of the city's founding in 1815, the steamboat had generated much prosperity in the region and attracted an influx of German immigrants who brought with them their religion and customs. By the mid-1800s these immigrants had made a permanent home in what was referred to as "America's Rhine Valley." For the next century, meatpackers and breweries, alongside the city's many churches, dominated much of the urban landscape of Covington.