Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Earlington, KY

Earlington is a home rule-class city in Hopkins County, in western Kentucky's coal country.

Earlington was founded in 1870 by the St. Bernard Coal Company and incorporated a year later, taking its name from John Baylis Earle, the lawyer who struck the first pick at the opening of Hopkins County's first commercial coal mine.

The Louisville and Nashville Railroad completed its line from Henderson to Earlington soon after the town was founded, and Earlington became the center of L&N operations on the Evansville line.

St. Bernard's second president, John B. Atkinson, built modern grade schools and a high school at company expense and also provided worker housing, a library, an arboretum, and churches.

Thanks to the coal company's electric generating plant, Earlington was one of the first fully electrified towns in western Kentucky.

The city's population peaked at 3,931 in the 1910 census, but the 2020 census counted just 1,257 residents after the local mines played out in the 1980s.

In 1967 the Earlington Yellowjackets won Kentucky's Sweet Sixteen state basketball tournament, and Earlington remains one of the smallest schools ever to win the title in the modern era.

Earlington operated its own independent school system until the mid-1970s, when it merged into the Hopkins County Schools and its students were split between South Hopkins and West Hopkins high schools along the railroad line that bisects town.

Immaculate Conception, the city's Roman Catholic parish, is the oldest Catholic parish in Hopkins County.

Loch Mary Reservoir lies within the Earlington city limits.