Nestled among the rolling foothills of Appalachia and bordered by the Cumberland River to the south and east, it is the seat of its county.

Burkesville stood on the Cumberland River, a major natural barrier between opposing forces, so Union and Confederate troops as well as guerillas led by Champ Ferguson sparred across the countryside.

Burkesville was a fairly busy river port whose heyday came during the latter part of the nineteenth century, when water transportation was the most feasible way to move large quantities of goods.

The last steamboat docked in Burkesville in 1929, the year after the first major road was opened to the larger city of Glasgow, 40 miles (64 km) to the west.

The river's head of commercial navigation moved from Burnside (which has a railroad) to Burkesville (which does not) when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began building Wolf Creek Dam without a lock about 25 miles upstream before World War II.

The corps' impoundment of Dale Hollow Reservoir in 1944 gave the town a tourist and fishing trade, and development of a trout fishery on the river from the dam to Burkesville has also provided a small economic boost, as has development of Dale Hollow Lake State Resort Park.

KY 90 East and KY 61 South are part of the Appalachian Development Highway System; Burkesville has the only 90-degree turn in an APD corridor, because the original route was moved west to please Tennessee Congressman Joe L. Evins and perhaps Kentucky Congressman Tim Lee Carter of Tompkinsville.

An old-fashioned town square sits on Main Street, which splits and forms a circle around the Cumberland County court house, the third incarnation of the structure.

Original buildings ring the square on three sides; the fourth was razed to make way for a modern justice center, completed in 2006.