Welcome to Letcher-County-on-the-Web
Developed by Cornett Media
for the
Letcher County Planning Commission
for the
Letcher County Planning Commission
Letcher County, Kentucky sits on the apex of the Cumberland Mountains, which straddle Virginia and Kentucky.
The County boasts unique geography, beauty, and people. Furthermore, its mountain geography makes it the headwaters of three major rivers of the Eastern United States: the Kentucky, the Big Sandy, and the Cumberland. Interestingly, though all three feed the Ohio River, they strike off in different directions when they flow away from their cheek-to-jowl origins in Letcher county. One, the Big Sandy, drives north into the Ohio in the northeast corner of the state at the point where Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio meet. The middle one, the Kentucky River, flows northwest into the Ohio on the north border between Kentucky and Ohio. The third, the Cumberland river, detours south into Tennessee before wandering back into Kentucky and adding its flow to the Ohio River on the far west of the state. Because of that Kentucky geography, the three end hundreds of miles from their origins and from each other.
( Letcher Countians are proud of being a headwaters county. They commonly boast that no water enters the county except from the sky, and that’s almost true. Click here for the exception). Furthermore, we are smack in the middle of the Southern Appalachians. (By the way, most of us pronounce that name App-uh-latch-uns, not App-uh-lay-chuns, and we hope you will do the same when you’re with us.)
Besides our headwaters distinction, the Southern Appalachians also cradle one of the most diverse and prolific eco-systems on our planet. In all of Europe, there are only about eighty species of trees. In the Southern Appalachians, there are roughly a hundred and fifty species of trees. And we’ve got most of them here in Letcher County. (Letcher Countians, anyway those who know that, are proud of that too. But mostly they love living in a place so rich in nature.)
For reasons to visit Letcher County, click here.
For reasons to live or retire in Letcher County, click here.
For reasons to establish a business in Letcher County, click here.
For Letcher County attractions, click here.
For Letcher County history, click here.
For Letcher County Civil War sites, click here.
For Letcher County historic graveyards, click here.
For places to hear music in Letcher County, click here.
For scenes of Letcher County, click here.
For Letcher County's Official Site, click here.
For Letcher County's Tourism website, click here.
For a one-minute video of why-letcher-county, click here.
For a two-minute video of an entertaining music story, click here.
For other features, click "Menu" in the upper left corner of this page.
