Appalachian History Series Evarts High School stood at the heart of Clover Fork for most of the twentieth century, first as the community’s own secondary school, then as one of three high schools in the Harlan County district. The Wildcats carried blue and gold in halls filled with class banners, pep club signs, and KHSAA schedules.

Appalachian History A store that anchored a town When Pocahontas Fuel Company built out its Boissevain operation in Tazewell County, it gave the camp a brick centerpiece that was part supermarket, part office, and part civic hall. Period photographs from the Norfolk & Western Railroad collections confirm a substantial commissary complex standing at Boissevain in 1931 and again in December 1935, the very years that defined the camp’s heyday.

Appalachian History Series A company town takes shape In 1916 Pocahontas Fuel established a new camp on the Guyandotte and named it for company president Isaac T. Mann. Within a short time Itmann gained pre cut houses, two early frame stores, a theater, and segregated schools. The store site was graded in 1917 in anticipation of a larger, permanent building that would anchor the town.

How two brothers from Leslie County helped turn bluegrass into college-concert fare, took a state song nationwide, and brought it all back home to Hyden. Origins in Leslie County Bobby Osborne and his younger brother Sonny were born in Hyden, the county seat of Leslie County, Kentucky. The Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum lists both brothers’ birthplace as Hyden, with Bobby born December 7, 1931 and Sonny born October 29, 1937.

Appalachian History Why Sycamore Shoals mattered In late September 1780, Patriot militia from the Holston and Watauga valleys answered a frontier alarm and converged on the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River, near present-day Elizabethton, Tennessee. There they set a firm rendezvous to carry the war over the mountains, find Major Patrick Ferguson, and break his Loyalist column.

Appalachian History On a cold Saturday morning in Anderson County, Tennessee, the Knoxville Iron Company’s Cross Mountain Mine No. 1 blew apart and turned the little coal town of Briceville into a scene of grief and rescue work that lasted ten long days. Eighty-four miners were dead, yet five men emerged alive after fifty-eight hours behind a hastily built barricade.

Breaking the Barrier of Women Coal Miners In the coalfields of eastern Kentucky, where coal seams carved both livelihood and hardship, Diana Baldwin carved history. At just 25 years old, in December 1973, she became one of the first two women, often credited as the first in a union mine, to work underground in a U.S. coal mine.

Appalachian Figures In the spring of 1948, eastern Kentucky sent a familiar courthouse figure to Washington. William Lewis had been a teacher, sheriff, prosecutor, and circuit judge across the upper Cumberland for half a century before he ever took a seat in the U.S. House. When he finally did, at age seventy-nine, he represented the old Ninth District for just the balance of one term, then stepped back home to London.

Appalachian Figures Born in the coal camp country of Yeaddiss in Leslie County, Kentucky, Hugh X. Lewis carried the cadence of the hills into Nashville’s studios, onto syndicated television, and back home to Appalachian radio across six decades.

Appalachian History Where is “Tunnel Hill”? Locals use Tunnel Hill for the crest above a pair of side-by-side railroad bores just northwest of Hazard. On the maps the spot falls within the unincorporated community historically called Dunraven. A quick way to pin it on the ground is the county’s own road index, which lists Tunnel Hill Cemetery in Dunraven.

Repurposed Appalachia In a narrow hollow north of downtown Kimball sits one of McDowell County’s most intact company stores. The Houston Coal Company Store, later known to locals as the Koppers Store, anchored daily life for the Carswell mining camp and still reads clearly as an early twentieth century company showpiece.