Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Pine Knot, KY

Pine Knot is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in southern McCreary County, on the Cumberland Plateau in southeastern Kentucky.

The 2020 census counted 1,380 residents in Pine Knot, down from 1,621 in 2010 and 1,680 in 2000.

Pine Knot sits in McCreary County, the only county in Kentucky with no incorporated city or town, so the community is governed entirely at the county level.

Kentucky place histories record that Pine Knot was briefly incorporated in 1912, but the incorporation was later dissolved and it is unincorporated today.

U.S. Route 27 passes through Pine Knot and meets Kentucky Route 92 there, putting the community a few miles south of Whitley City, the McCreary County seat, and about 12 miles north of Oneida, Tennessee.

The census-designated place covers about 6.47 square miles atop a ridge at roughly 1,411 feet in elevation, draining toward tributaries of the Cumberland River.

United States Penitentiary, McCreary, a federal high-security prison, stands about 3 miles east of Pine Knot and carries a Pine Knot mailing address.

McCreary County Airport is located about 3 miles northeast of the community.

Pine Knot is served by the McCreary County School District, the county's single school district, whose comprehensive high school is McCreary Central High School.

In the 2000 census, Pine Knot's 1,680 residents lived in 584 households with an average household size of 2.39 people, and the community is served by ZIP code 42635 in the Eastern Time Zone.