Whitesburg, Kentucky

• Open map evidence
• Research guide
• Letcher County

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 1 record

• Whitesburg Historic Districtlisted 2006

Whitesburg fell from 2,139 to 1,773 between 2010 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.

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.

• 1890 USGS Whitesburg quadrangle1:125000
• 1892 USGS Whitesburg quadrangle1:125000, 4 printings
• 1913 USGS Oven Fork quadrangle1:48000
• 1915 USGS Whitesburg quadrangle1:62500, 4 printings
• 1935 USGS Pardee quadrangle1:24000
• 1954 USGS Whitesburg quadrangle1:24000, 4 printings
• 1957 USGS Jenkins quadrangle1:250000
• 1960 USGS Jenkins quadrangle1:250000
• 1977 USGS Pikeville quadrangle1:100000

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 194 fires within 5 miles of Whitesburg between 1997 and 2020, burning about 11,358 acres in total. None started naturally. 24 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.

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

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

• Bellcraft
• Marlowe
• West Whitesburg (historical)
• Whitco
• Crafts Colly (historical)
• Day

Every fire recorded in Letcher County

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 4 workings within 5 miles of Whitesburg: 2 prospects, 2 producers. 2 still produce. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Clay, Silica. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Every working recorded in Letcher County

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Whitesburg in 41 storm reports between 1996 and 2024: 20 thunderstorm wind, 8 flash flood, 7 hail, 5 heavy rain. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. 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.

Every storm recorded in Letcher County

1 paper published in this town, digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read: 208 issues, 1,006 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.

Front pages of the local paper, read from the Library of Congress scans: 6 issues spread across its run from 1909 to 1926, 11,720 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.

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

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.

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 506678. 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.

Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

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.