24/7 Biohazard Cleanup Near North Burnside Burnside, KY

Burnside is a home rule-class city in Pulaski County, Kentucky, set where the South Fork of the Cumberland River joins the main river on the shores of Lake Cumberland.

The community was first settled as Point Isabel, a name local tradition ties to a woman who, legend says, jumped from a nearby cliff after breaking off a relationship.

In 1890 the town was renamed Burnside in honor of Union General Ambrose Burnside, who had established a camp there during the Civil War, and the city was incorporated that same year.

In its heyday Burnside was a center for shipping by rail and steamboat packet, and its lumber mills sent products around the world.

Burnside Academy, which operated in the town, was the first Wesleyan preparatory school in Kentucky.

In the early 1950s, the entire town of Burnside was relocated to higher ground because of the impounding of Lake Cumberland.

Burnside is one of several places claiming the first Boy Scout troop in the United States: in 1908, Myra Greeno Bass organized a troop of 15 local boys using official Scout materials she had acquired from England, and a state historical marker at the edge of town proclaims Burnside the "Birthplace of Boy Scouts in America."

The 2020 census counted 694 residents in Burnside, up from 611 in 2010; at the 2000 census the city had 637 people living in 287 households.

American author Harriette Simpson Arnow, known for her novel The Dollmaker, lived in Burnside as a child.

In 2004 Burnside became the only town in Pulaski County or any adjoining county to allow the sale of alcoholic beverages in qualified establishments, and after annexing about eight miles of Lake Cumberland shoreline that includes Lee's Ford Marina, voters made the city fully "wet" on October 15, 2013.