Corbin, Kentucky

Corbin sits on the Knox-Whitley county line in southeastern Kentucky, a railroad junction town that became famous for something entirely unexpected: fried chicken. In nineteen thirty, a gas station owner and self-taught cook named Harland Sanders opened a small dining room attached to his service station on Dixie Highway. He slow-fried chicken in a cast-iron skillet while travelers waited for their cars, and the food drew a following from across the region.

By nineteen thirty-five, the governor of Kentucky had made him a Colonel, the ceremonial title that stuck for the rest of his life. Sanders eventually sold his Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise system for two million dollars in nineteen sixty-four. The original Corbin restaurant, rebuilt after a fire, still stands on U.

S. Twenty-Five West and operates today as a working KFC with a small museum inside.