The Licking River is a 303 miles (487.6 km) tributary of the Ohio River

Ohio River

The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...

 in northeastern Kentucky

Kentucky

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. The river and its tributaries drain much of the region of northeastern Kentucky between the watersheds of the Kentucky River

Kentucky River

The Kentucky River is a tributary of the Ohio River, long, in the U.S. state of Kentucky. The river and its tributaries drain much of the central region of the state, with its upper course passing through the coal-mining regions of the Cumberland Mountains, and its lower course passing through the...

 to the west and the Big Sandy River

Big Sandy River (Ohio River)

The Big Sandy River is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately long, in western West Virginia and northeastern Kentucky in the United States. The river forms part of the boundary between the two states along its entire course...

 to the east.
The Native Americans

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

 of the area called the river Nepernine. When the explorer Dr. Thomas Walker

Thomas Walker (explorer)

Dr. Thomas Walker was a physician and explorer from Virginia who led an expedition to what is now the region beyond the Allegheny Mountains area of British North America in the mid-18th century...

 first saw it in 1750, he called it Frederick's River.