Corbin, Kentucky. City and Business guide.

Welcome to Corbin, Kentucky.

Corbin is a city in Whitley and Knox counties in southeastern Kentucky. The urbanized area around Corbin extends also into Laurel County; this area, known as North Corbin, is not incorporated into the city limits. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 7,742.

small town skyline: Corbin, Kentucky, USA Photo: Janet Powell
The Corbin area, known originally as Lynn Camp, was first settled by Europeans around 1800. The present town came into being when the Louisville and Nashville Railroad laid the first tracks through the area around 1883. Swampland, chosen because it was both flat and cheap, was drained to make way for a depot and roundhouse, and a town soon grew up around the tracks.

Corbin lies in the Cumberland Plateau region of Appalachia in southeastern Kentucky. The Pine Mountain Overthrust Fault, a geologic fault system located several miles to the east, produces occasional tremors.

Each year in early August, Corbin hosts a festival called NIBROC (Corbin spelled backwards) featuring open-air concerts, carnival attractions, a beauty pageant, parade, and other events. The festival is featured, if anachronistically, in the play Last Train to Nibroc by Arlene Hutton. (Though the play is set in the 1940s, the festival itself only dates to 1952).

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