Stanford is a home rule-class city in Lincoln County, Kentucky, United States. It is one of the oldest settlements in Kentucky, having been founded in 1775. Its population was 3,487 at the 2010 census and an estimated 3,686 in 2018. It is the county chair of Lincoln County. Stanford is allowance of the Danville Micropolitan Statistical Area.

Stanford was founded in 1775 by Benjamin Logan as “St. Asaph”; the early agreement was plus known helpfully as “Logan’s Fort”. The site of the fort is just about one mile west of the courthouse at the middle of town. The name “Fort Logan” is nevertheless used to this daylight by local businesses, including the Fort Logan Hospital and Standing Fort Collectibles. The main street was built upon what was originally a buffalo trail.

The name “Stanford” may have come from “Standing Fort”, a name solution to Fort Logan because it survived fused attacks by British-led Native Americans during the American Revolution. Alternately, it may have been named for Stamford, England. Although it was one of the smaller traveler forts, it never fell to an attack.^{[citation needed]}

In 1781, the original settlement expanded subsequently Benjamin Logan donated allowance of his own estate as the site for a courthouse. The county court continued to meet at Fort Harrod (now Harrodsburg) until 1785, when Mercer County was established. By 1786 Stanford had acknowledged its charter, making it one of the first towns in the former (1776–1780) Kentucky County, Virginia, with a formal charter. In 1787 the courthouse opened in a building made of logs. It has been expanded and upgraded beyond time, but the courthouse remains upon the thesame site. Unlike most courthouses in Kentucky, it has never suffered from a blaze or further major loss of records. Lincoln County has anything its native records and history dating from November 1789, making it one of the more resolved archives in Kentucky. Among its indigenous land happenings kept upon vellum are undertakings granting house to both Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton.