Hustonville, KY

Hustonville is a home rule-class city in Lincoln County, Kentucky, along Kentucky Route 78 near the headwaters of Hanging Fork Creek. The first settlement grew at a crossroads of trails connecting the Kentucky and Green rivers, the Falls of the Ohio, and Logan's Fort near present-day Stanford. Its names changed with the community's development: The Crossroads became Farmington, then Hanging Fork after a nearby stream, and briefly New Store. The town was renamed Hustonville in 1836 for two local landowners and formally incorporated in 1850.

Hustonville's older story is tied to movement, religion, and education. The creek country directed early travel, while the road through town still points toward U.S. Route 127 and the wider Danville area. Christian College operated in Hustonville during the middle nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Augustus O. Stanley, later a Kentucky governor and senator, taught belles-lettres there in 1890. Today the city remains a compact Lincoln County place, with its changing names, Main Street route, church history, and Hanging Fork watershed giving it more depth than a crossroads on a highway map.