Whitesburg, KY

Whitesburg is Letcher County's seat in the valley of the North Fork of the Kentucky River, a courthouse town with an arts institution that gives the place a much wider voice. The city was founded in 1842 on land offered for the county seat and named for John D. White. Appalshop has made downtown Whitesburg a home for Appalachian film, radio, archives, music, education, and community work, while the river valley keeps the coalfield landscape close. The Letcher County Library and schools add the civic side. Whitesburg is the kind of eastern Kentucky town where the courthouse, the river, the flood marks, and the recording studio all belong in the same paragraph.