Hyden, KY

Hyden is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of Leslie County, Kentucky, United States. The 2020 census counted 303 residents. Hyden is located at the junction of U.S. Route 421 and Kentucky Route 80, along the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River. The area was first settled around 1800 by the Sizemores, a mixed-blood family migrating from North Carolina, with a brief stay in Hawkins County, Tennessee, before making it to Kentucky. Hyden has a lending library, the Leslie County Public Library. Hyden's local map joins its older history to the places and landscapes that still shape the town today, all within the wider Kentucky setting.

The local scoop is how Hyden's history still shows up in the places people visit, work, learn, and meet. John "Rock House" Sizemore and his wife, Nancy Sizemore, lived in a rock house about a hundred yards up from the mouth of the creek which would later bear his name. Most of the city is on the west side of the river, at the confluence of Rockhouse Creek from the west.