Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Pikeville, KY

Pikeville is a home rule-class city and the county seat of Pike County, the largest county in Kentucky by land area, set deep in the Appalachian coal country of far eastern Kentucky.

The 2020 census counted 7,754 residents in Pikeville, up from 6,903 in 2010.

The county seat was established in 1824 on land donated by farmer Elijah Adkins, after an earlier site chosen in 1822 under the name 'Liberty' was rejected.

The town was first incorporated in 1848 under the name Piketon and was renamed Pikeville in 1850.

Pikeville was designated an All-America City by the National Civic League in 1965.

Pikeville is famous for the Pikeville Cut-Through, a channel blasted through Peach Orchard Mountain by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers between November 26, 1973, and October 2, 1987.

The cut is 1,300 feet wide, 3,700 feet long, and 523 feet deep, and the project moved nearly 18 million cubic yards of soil and rock, an earth-moving effort often described as second only to the Panama Canal.

The Cut-Through rerouted the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River, the railroad, and a four-lane highway carrying U.S. 23, U.S. 119, U.S. 460, and KY 80, ending the near-yearly flooding of downtown Pikeville; the project cost $77.6 million.

The Cut-Through was championed by Dr. William Hambley, who served as Pikeville's mayor for 29 years.

Hillbilly Days, Pikeville's signature festival held each April, was begun in the late 1970s by local Shriners as a fundraiser for the Shriners children's hospital in Lexington and has grown into one of Kentucky's largest festivals.