Nortonville, Kentucky: Railroad Dreams and Coal Reality

Nortonville owes its name to Eckstein Norton, a Kentucky investment banker who acquired about two thousand acres here with grand expectations. Two railroads were crossing this corner of Hopkins County and Norton believed the intersection would make him rich. He laid out lots and waited.

The town grew slowly, a post office, a church, a few stores, but the fortune never arrived, and Norton went on to become president of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad instead. His heirs eventually sold the land in nineteen oh two to a group of investors who sank a shaft mine called the Nortonville Coal Company. The coal under those same two thousand acres made real what the railroad alone never could, and the little town finally found its purpose about thirty years after its founder had given up on it.