Kentucky Coal Heritage Trail

06/02/2026

Coal never moved itself from these mountains — it moved on rails. When the Sandy Valley & Elkhorn reached Jenkins in 1912, and the L&N and C&O climbed the Cumberland and Big Sandy valleys, they carried coal and other goods to the steel mills and shipyards that built the country.

The 1911 depot at Jenkins still stands as a museum. Follow the old grades and you're following the line that carried these mountains to the country.

06/01/2026

Wheelwright, Floyd County. In 1930, the Inland Steel Company bought this Otter Creek coal camp for a single reason: the Elkhorn No. 3 seam beneath it ran low in sulfur and rich in the metallurgical coal a steelmaker needs. The coal mined here traveled north to Inland's coke ovens at Indiana Harbor, where it helped turn iron into steel. A company town in the Eastern Kentucky mountains, feeding the furnaces that built America.

05/28/2026

Hyden was laid out in 1878 at the mouth of Rockhouse Creek, where the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River bends through Leslie County, and named for state Senator John Hyden. For decades it stayed so isolated that supplies came upriver by canoe. In 1925 Mary Breckinridge based the Frontier Nursing Service here, its nurses riding out on horseback to the coal camps and hollers. Her log headquarters at Wendover still stands above the river.

05/26/2026

In 1911, the Consolidation Coal Company bought over 100,000 acres along the Little Elkhorn and built a town from the ground up — sawmills, brickyards, a hospital, schools, houses by the hundred — named for George C. Jenkins, a Baltimore banker on its board. The rails reached town in 1912, and by 1916 Letcher County was Kentucky's largest coal producer. The 1911 depot still stands on Main Street as the David A. Zegeer Coal-Railroad Museum.

05/25/2026

Before it was Memorial Day, these mountains kept Decoration Day. Every spring, coal-camp families gathered at the hillside cemeteries to tend the family plots, lay flowers and share the stories of those who came before. In the coal towns along this trail — from Lynch to Jenkins to Hyden — families still keep the tradition, honoring the men and women who served and the generations before them. This weekend, we remember them with gratitude.

05/23/2026

Summer driving season opens this weekend. The Kentucky Coal Heritage Trail winds from Stearns to Lynch, Harlan to Jenkins, Hazard to Wheelwright, and every coal-camp hollow in between. Some have museums. Some have restored mines. Some are quiet streets with company houses still standing. Where are you headed first this year?

05/21/2026

In 1926, the Middlesboro Coal House was built from 42 tons of bituminous coal — blocks of black coal cut, hauled, and laid like brick into a one-story building that still stands on North 20th Street. The whole town sits inside a meteor impact crater roughly 3 miles across, formed less than 300 million years ago. It's the only place in the world where coal has been mined inside one.

05/21/2026

⛰️ A coal seam is an ancient forest pressed into stone — layer on layer of Eastern Kentucky at the center of the region's story. It's the subject 207 students have explored all week at CEDAR's Regional Coal Fair. Final public day today at UPIKE, 2–8pm.

A coal seam is an ancient forest pressed into stone — layer on layer of Eastern Kentucky, built up over millions of years into the black band at the center of the region's story. It is the subject K–12 students have spent all week exploring at the 2026 CEDAR Regional Coal Fair.

The fair opens to the public one final time today, Thursday, May 21, from 2:00 to 8:00 PM on the 7th-floor pavilion at the University of Pikeville. Admission is free.

207 projects fill the hall — students from six Eastern Kentucky school districts and three private academies, working on the science of coal and reclamation, its history, and the future of the communities it built, across seven subject areas.

Come spend an hour and see what the next generation of Eastern Kentucky is working on.

UPIKE HPE Building · 7th Floor Pavilion (Kentucky College of Optometry)

05/20/2026

🌲 The evergreen in CEDAR's name is the Eastern Red Cedar — native to these mountains, green through every winter. Fitting for a fair that's gathered Eastern Kentucky students around the region's coal heritage since 1993. 207 projects on display at UPIKE through Thursday, 2–8pm.

🌲 Day two of public viewing is underway at the 2026 CEDAR Regional Coal Fair. The evergreen in CEDAR’s name is the Eastern Red Cedar — native to these mountains, green through every winter, and a fitting emblem for a fair where students show what they have built.
The fair is open again today, Wednesday, May 20, and once more tomorrow, Thursday, May 21, on the 7th-floor pavilion at the University of Pikeville. Public viewing runs 2:00 to 8:00 PM each day, and admission is free.
207 projects from K–12 students across six Eastern Kentucky school districts and three private academies remain on display, spanning science, mathematics, English and literature, art, music, technology and multimedia, and social studies.
Come see their work.
UPIKE HPE Building · 7th Floor Pavilion (Kentucky College of Optometry)

05/19/2026

In 1902, two women from the Bluegrass founded a school in the mountains.

May Stone and Katherine Pettit climbed into Knott County on horseback in 1902 and founded the Hindman Settlement School — the first rural settlement school in the United States. It's still standing on Troublesome Creek, and the Appalachian Writers' Workshop has gathered there every summer since 1977. Coal camps came later to the hollows around Hindman. The school came first.

Hindman is part of the Kentucky Coal Heritage Trail.