Burlington: from Craig’s Camp to Boone’s seat

The camp was named for John Hawkins Craig. The next year John Craig and Robert Johnson, who has his own story here, gave 74 acres at the Woolper Creek site for a town they called Wilmington.

Court sat in a log courthouse in January 1801, and the town was platted that September. County surveyor Moses Scott laid the streets around a central Public Square; two roads later cut through the square.

In 1816 the U.S. Post Office asked for a new name, and Burlington stuck. The town was incorporated in 1824 and lost its charter in 1923. It remains one of Kentucky’s two unincorporated county seats, with Whitley City in McCreary County. The 1889 Renaissance Revival courthouse, by the McDonald brothers, still stands, and the Burlington Historic District was listed in 1979. The map pin marks the town.