Appalachian History Series Bull’s Gap sits where the railroad and the road squeeze through Bays Mountain between Greene and Hawkins counties. In the fall of 1864 the gap again became the key to East Tennessee. Across three days, November 11 to 13, Major General John C. Breckinridge pressed a smaller Federal force under Alvan C. Gillem, roughly 2,500 effectives, with about 3,000 Confederates on the field.

Appalachian History Series A Yard Built for Coal Country On a broad bottom along the Cumberland River, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad built a new classification yard at Shonn, the rail hamlet that would soon be known as Loyall. Construction occurred in 1921 to serve the coal boom that was transforming Harlan County. Contemporary descriptions and later summaries agree on the timing.

Abandoned Appalachia Series A school on Browney’s Creek Cubbage Elementary stood in the Miracle community of far-southeastern Bell County, Kentucky, near the junction of KY 987 and KY 219. Locals often identify the broader area by the stream that drains it, Browney’s Creek, and by the clustered family names that gave Miracle its name.

Appalachian History Series A highway made a lake Lake Linville is not a conventional reservoir built behind a separate concrete structure. Kentucky’s own mapping and basin summary explain that “Renfro Creek was dammed in 1968 by the I-75 fill embankment to create the lake.” The same Kentucky Geological Survey page notes that the Mount Vernon Water Works draws its raw water from Lake Linville and even provides a ramp locator for public access.

Appalachian History Series Setting the scene Where Paint Creek meets the Levisa Fork at Paintsville, a federal reservoir now anchors the landscape and the local economy. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers calls it Paintsville Lake, a rock-fill dam with an impervious core that impounds a narrow mountain lake used for flood risk reduction, water supply, low-flow augmentation, fish and wildlife, and recreation.

Appalachian History Series What Congress Authorized and Why In July 1960 the Flood Control Act became law and it expressly authorized “the project for flood control and allied purposes on Laurel River, Kentucky,” to be carried out in line with the Chief of Engineers’ recommendations in House Document 413 of the 86th Congress.

Appalachian History Series Along a bend of the Ohio near Lloyd, Kentucky, the Greenup Locks and Dam turned a troublesome stretch of river into a predictable navigation pool and later became home to one of the valley’s most productive municipal hydro plants.

Appalachian History Series What and where Grayson Lake is a narrow, cliff-lined reservoir on the Little Sandy River in Carter and Elliott counties, Kentucky. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Huntington District built an earth and random rock-fill dam about seven miles south of the town of Grayson, creating a lake roughly 20 miles long with about 1,510 acres at summer pool.

Appalachian History Series A new lake in the Upper Cumberland On the Obey River near Celina in Clay County, Tennessee, the United States Army Corps of Engineers built Dale Hollow Dam during World War II to control floods across the Cumberland system. The reservoir sprawls across the Tennessee–Kentucky line and today anchors recreation, hydropower, and regional water management.

Appalachian History Series Setting the scene Kitts sat where a small mountain stream meets the Clover Fork of the Cumberland River, a few miles east of the county seat at Harlan. Historic USGS 7.5-minute topographic maps place “Kitts Creek” entering the river just below the rail and road corridor that funneled coal out of the valley, with the town of Harlan upstream and Evarts downstream.

Appalachian History Series Introduction In the first days of October 1864 Union cavalry rode into the steep valleys around Saltville, Virginia. Their objective was simple in design and daunting in practice. Destroy the Confederacy’s most important source of salt. The fight that followed became one of the best documented clashes in Appalachia during the war. What happened afterward made Saltville a byword for racial violence in the conflict.