Gateway to the South

... is one of the nicknames that Wikipedia lists for Louisville (after Derby City and River City, but before Falls City or The 'Ville). If you search for Gateway to the South on Wikipedia, it will even redirect you to the Louisville page. But there seems to be very little further evidence to justify this.

'Derby City' refers of course to the Kentucky Derby, which is run in the city. Louisville has football teams named Derby City Rovers (men's soccer) and Derby City Dynamite (women's gridiron). 'River City' has official sanction: Louisville's major public transportation provider is the Transit Authority of River City (TARC). But Wikipedia gives no justification for its listing of Gateway to the South as one of Louisville's nicknames.

If you google 'Gateway to the South', the first page that refers to any American city lists Dallas, Atlanta and Houston as candidates for the title – but not Louisville. A book listed by Amazon is entitled Nashville: Gateway to the South. A site called HistoricPictoric is selling a poster proclaiming Cincinnatti as the Gateway to the South. At this point (on Page 4 of Google's results) I gave up searching for any reference to Louisville.

As someone who grew up listening to his big brother's copy of Peter Sellers's 1958 album The Best of Sellers (among other things, obviously) I was however gratified to find that by far the most popular nomination for the title of Gateway to the South is Balham (pronounced "Bal–ham").