Loyall, a small Harlan county town, grew up around a railroad switch yard in the 1920s. The town is just below the forks of the Cumberland River about a mile west of Harlan. The first post office opened in 1922 as Shonn, a local word for a rail siding, and was renamed Loyall in 1932, perhaps for a railroad company official. The population in 1990 was 1,100.
