Glasgow, Kentucky

Located approximately 30 miles east of Bowling Green, the town of Glasgow, Kentucky, is a gem in the southern part of the Commonwealth. Kentucky Life visited this Barren County town to get to know some of the businesses operating there.

One of the newest attractions in downtown Glasgow is Yancey’s Gastropub & Brewery.

“We opened in July. it’s the first brewery in our region and we’re quite proud of that,” says owner Jeffery Jobe. “We took a chance, worked some bugs out, and now we’re going pretty strong and people are saying nice things.”

Jobe says the community embraced Yancey’s before it even opened, with locals providing some of the tables and chairs for the pub’s courtyard.

Yancey’s adds something new to the center of Glasgow.

“We’ve got a nice bistro that’s here and The Plaza theater and some other established businesses that have been here a long time,” says Jobe. “But the gastropub and a brewery is totally new. We’ve got something totally unique going here in Glasgow.”

Yancey’s offers beers brewed right on site along with what Jobe describes as a “funky menu” in the gastropub. And it provides a place the community can be proud of.

“We’re sharing life together. We’re just doing it our own way,” Jobe says when asked what makes Glasgow a good place to open a business. “We’re enjoying ourselves and I think that’s contagious. I think that if people see us doing that might say, hey what’s happening over there, let’s go try it.”

Down the street from the new attraction is a business that deals in much older goods. Eddie Bruner runs Glasgow Coin & Jewelry where he buys and sells rare coins and currency. For Bruner, downtown is the place to be.

“Our square has not become a ghost town. It’s an active downtown,” he says. “Glasgow cares about the way it looks down here. We have good retail, good services, food, everything going on downtown. We have new businesses coming in which is nice for a small community. We have a beautiful courthouse right in the middle of the square. To me, business is done downtown. This is where you do it. I kind of like that.”

Glasgow’s history is preserved downtown in the South Central Kentucky Cultural Center, a museum that contains artifacts significant to Barren County and the surrounding area.

“We are the keeper of the community memory,” says Executive Director Sherry Wesley. “We start with early settlement downstairs and we go chronologically upstairs, from the military, back to the ‘60s.

“We have volunteers that put all this together,” she adds. “It’s a very meaningful place.”

This segment is part of Kentucky Life episode #2417, which originally aired on May 18, 2019. Watch the full episode.