Kentucky Route 261
state highway in Kentucky

Kentucky Route 261 (KY 261) is a 42.605-mile-long (68.566 km) state highway in Kentucky that runs from Kentucky Route 54 southeast of Fordsville to Kentucky Route 79 and Sandy Hill Road in rural Meade County southwest of Brandenburg via McQuady, Hardinsburg, and Webster.
Route description
KY 261 begins at a junction with KY 54 on the east side of Fordsville, located in northeastern Ohio County. It then traverses the southernmost tip of Hancock County. The highway intersects KY 2124, along with a few more rural state highways that connect this particular area to Hawesville, the county seat of Hancock County.
KY 261 enters Breckinridge County and then intersects KY 105 at McQuady. It meets U.S. Route 60 (US 60) and KY 259 in the Breckinridge County seat, Hardinsburg. The highway runs concurrently with KY 259 from the US 60 junction to downtown Hardinsburg. KY 261 turns away to traverse mainly rural areas of northeastern Breckinridge County. That section of the route also includes a stretch concurrent with KY 86.
KY 261 ends in Meade County at an intersection with KY 79 between Irvington and the Meade County seat of Brandenburg.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Kentucky Route 261” is state highway in Kentucky. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Kentucky, Route and state, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “state highway in Kentucky” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 15, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q18387694. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kentucky Route 261” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.