Guthrie, KY

Guthrie sits on the Kentucky–Tennessee line in Todd County, where a stagecoach stop became a railroad town. The Pondy Woods stop served travelers in the 1840s, and Guthrie took its name from James Guthrie, president of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, when the town was founded in 1867. The city incorporated in 1876 and later became the birthplace of poet Robert Penn Warren. The border is still part of the place’s character, with State Line as an older name and railroad photographs filling out the local memory. Guthrie is a Kentucky town that grew from a stop, a rail line, and a name that arrived from the railroad office.