A major cultural and historical asset of Barbourville is her people and their broad (if not universal) interest in history.  As early as the county's first newspaper, the Mountain Echo (begun in 1873), editors frequently published stories about the area's frontier past, an indication of their readers' interest in history.  The current weekly newspaper, The Barbourville Mountain Advocate, which has approached over one hundred years of publishing, continues this tradition today.  The Daniel Boone Festival Committee makes sure that frontier traditions are never forgotten by staging long rifle shootouts and hosting primitive village and Indian camps during the festival, along with other educational and entertaining events.

City government functions smoothly and has an excellent street department that keeps the streets very clean and Main Street and floodwall entrances well mown.  The city has a small but loyal core of civic-minded people who support most every positive improvement or public event.  In recent years, Union College has become much more active in community affairs than in years past.  Knox Partners, Inc. is a combination of the best talents from the city, county and Union College.

That Barbourville has much more mass media than such a small town should expect is due to its progressive city government and utilities commission.  Yahoo! recently named Barbourville as one of the best wired towns in the nation, because of its cable modem system.  Union College's strong emphasis on electronic technology encouraged the city to move in this direction.

The county school board took over the local access television channel in 2001, promising aspiring young filmmakers an outlet for their work and providing commercial television stations with a working studio downtown.  Each year, TV-4's high school announcers televise the primary election returns live, along with pre-recorded interviews and political documentaries.

A block away from TV-4 is Barbourville's radio station, which broadcasts both FM and AM signals, and plays "The Best Mix--Mix 96.1" and gospel music, respectively.  Barbourville has had newspapers, as noted before, as early as 1873 and is still well served by a weekly local news.  The museum publishes an historical quarterly, The Knox Countian, which has won several awards for excellence.  Union College still publishes a student newspaper (which is around 60 years old), and both the county and city high school systems print school newspapers.

Knox County Hospital opened a new multi-million dollar facility on the site of the old Minton horse farm in 2000.  There are several multi-doctor health clinics and dentist offices in town, as well as a two-story nursing home.  Animal lovers do not have to leave town to find good veterinarian services.

Educational opportunities are certainly open to everyone in Barbourville.  Barbourville City School and Knox Central High School are both within the city limits, and the county has a number of elementary schools within the city limits or just oustide its borders.  Knox County Area Technology Center offers vocational training close to the county school campus.  Union College gives the community all of the benefits of a four-year college program and the peripheral pleasures of college-level athletics and a solid library.  Knox Public Library downtown is fully computerized and furnished to do everything from serving a school boy writing his first research paper to helping an elderly woman looking into her family history.

A major need that has been fulfilled in the last decade is good accommodations for visitors.  The Wilderness Trail Best Western Inn on 25E has forty-three rooms, some with private Jacuzzis.  Two bed-and-breakfast inns face each other across Knox Street two blocks from the court square and offer a visit to the early 1900s and a stay in historically significant Barbourville business families' homes.

Barbourville has a great number of strengths and assets, much more than most of its citizens appreciate.

Written by Charles Reed Mitchell         
-Knox Historical Museum