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Earlington, Kentucky

14 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1907 and the latest in 1983. It stands in the Madisonville census division. It lies in ZIP code area 42410. The Survey maps it on the Madisonville West quadrangle. 1,257 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 423 feet above sea level.

Earlington within Hopkins County

On record in Earlington

Buildings and businesses the archive holds for this place. Each opens its own page, with the source record it came from.

On the National Register 2 records

Population over time

3 figures

Earlington fell from 1,649 to 1,257 between 2000 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

YearPeople Change
20001,649
20101,413-236 (-14%)
20201,257-156 (-11%)

Topographic sheets covering this place

8 surveys from 14 printed sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

Fires near this place

34 since 1998

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 34 fires within 5 miles of Earlington between 1998 and 2017, burning about 380 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 3 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause Fires
Debris and open burning13
Missing data/not specified/undetermined7
Recreation and ceremony7
Arson/incendiarism3
Railroad operations and maintenance2
Equipment and vehicle use1
Natural1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

DateCause SizeReported by Name on the report
6 September 2011Missing data/not specified/undetermined2.0 acresKentucky Division of ForestryB & K SAWMILL
6 September 2010Recreation and ceremony10 acresKentucky Division of ForestryLABOR
3 August 2010Missing data/not specified/undetermined4.0 acresKentucky Division of Forestry2 FENCE
20 August 2007Debris and open burning74 acresKentucky Division of Forestrynot named
31 July 2006Missing data/not specified/undetermined114 acresKentucky Division of ForestryBIRDS NEST
23 July 2008Arson/incendiarism2.0 acresKentucky Division of Forestrynot named
1 July 2012Railroad operations and maintenanceunder an acreKentucky Division of ForestryROCK SPARK
24 May 2012Recreation and ceremonyunder an acreKentucky Division of ForestryEARLINGTON

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Hopkins County

Storms near this place

16 since 2003

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Earlington in 16 storm reports between 2003 and 2025: 5 thunderstorm wind, 3 flash flood, 2 hail, 2 heavy rain. The reports record 40 injuries. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

WhenEvent Place namedHarm What the report says
November 2005Tornado (F4)Earlington40 hurt, $31,000,000This violent tornado reached its peak intensity on the north side of Earlington, near the beginning of its track. Peak winds there were estimated near 220 MPH. Several houses in this area, on either side of U.S. Highway 41, were levelled. Large oak trees were reduced to nubs, and the ground was scoured to bare dirt. A steel beam was carried some distance and became wedged against trees and other debris. 24 people were treated for injuries at a local hospital, and three of the injuries were critical. About 151 homes and buildings were destroyed, 67 suffered major damage, and 303 received minor damage. Damage indications, as well as eyewitness accounts, indicate the occurrence of multiple vortices near Earlington. The tornado continued northeast and weakened, crossing the Pennyrile Parkway at mile marker 41. The tornado lifted less than a mile from the Mclean County border. The average path width was 525 yards. The tornado was close to a half mile wide in places.
July 2022Flash FloodEarlington$4,000Flash flooding was reported up to the back porch in the garage of a home. Six to eight inches of water was up to the front porch step. A Kentucky mesonet site in the immediate area measured 4.80 inches of rain.
May 2025Thunderstorm WindEarlington$2,000Tree limbs were reported down in the Earlington area as a line of storms moved eastward through the county.
May 2017Thunderstorm WindEarlington$2,000In southern Hopkins County, damaging thunderstorm winds gusted up to 62 mph. A trained spotter in Mortons Gap estimated winds gusted to 60 mph, causing a power outage and snapping a large tree. Another nearby large tree was uprooted onto a home. A Kentucky mesonet site just east of Earlington measured a wind gust to 62 mph.
July 2012Thunderstorm WindEarlington$2,000Large tree limbs were blown down.
July 2020FloodEarlington-Minor street and yard flooding occurred.
April 2016Tornado (EF0)Earlington-Law enforcement personnel reported a brief tornado near Earlington. No damage was located. Based on radar indications, the parent circulation of this tornado also produced the funnel cloud that was earlier reported west of Mortons Gap. The parent circulation crossed over U.S. Highway 41 less than a mile south of Earlington.
July 2012Thunderstorm WindEarlington-A wind gust to 66 mph was measured by the Kentucky mesonet site near Earlington.
May 2011Thunderstorm WindEarlington-A trained spotter estimated a wind gust to 60 mph.
March 2009HailEarlington-Quarter-size hail fell on the south side of Earlington.
April 2009Heavy RainEarlington-U.S. Highway 41 was flooded out. Numerous other smaller roads were flooded. A mesonet site in Hopkins County measured 1.03 inches.
June 2009Flash FloodEarlington-Several roads in the Earlington area were covered with water at least three inches deep. Several roads in the city of Dawson Springs were impassable. A mesonet site near Madisonville reported 0.94 inches in 30 minutes, and a total of 2.97 inches in three hours.
May 2008Flash FloodEarlington-Six inches of water was flowing over U.S. Highway 41 at Earlington. Both sides of the road were flooded over on U.S. Highway 41 by the county central high school. A spotter reported two to three inches of rain in an hour.
October 2004Heavy RainEarlington-Six inches of water was over U.S. Highway 41.
March 2017Funnel CloudEarlington-no account filed
July 2003HailEarlington-no account filed

Every storm recorded in Hopkins County

Newspapers printed here

8,848 digitised pages

1 paper published in this town, digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read: 1,513 issues, 8,848 pages. Every page is searchable, so a name or a street can be looked for directly in what the town printed about itself at the time.

NewspaperPublished
The Bee1889 to 19??

What the paper printed

13,443 words

Front pages of the local paper, read from the Library of Congress scans: 6 issues spread across its run from 1892 to 1916, 13,443 words in total. Each is reproduced on its own page, exactly as the recogniser returned it.

These pages read less well than anything else here, and the number is worth stating: about three words in four come through cleanly, against nine in ten for the building records. An 1896 broadsheet sets eight-point type in seven columns on microfilm, which is the hardest thing in this archive to read by machine. We tested our own recognisers against the Library's and they were not better, so the Library's text is what appears, with the wholly unreadable columns removed. Read it as a guide to what the paper covered, and follow the link to the scan before quoting anything.

IssuePaper Length
1892-04-28The Bee4,390 words
1892-06-23The Bee3,010 words
1892-08-25The Bee2,298 words
1892-10-20The Bee1,819 words
1892-12-22The Bee1,640 words
1916-12-29The Bee286 words

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Map PlaceDistance Sheets
West Side Heights0.6 miles14
Hecla1.1 miles14
Wesco1.3 miles14
Dozier Heights1.5 miles14
Brentwood1.6 miles14
Barnsley1.7 miles12
Flat Creek (historical)2.2 miles12
Grapevine2.3 miles12

Elsewhere

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

Wikipedia article on EarlingtonAn encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q3180829The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0).

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 491420. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.