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Calvin
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Calvin
(Bell):
(Varilla, Middlesboro North). This hamlet with post office and a station
on the Kentucky & Virginia (L&N) RR, is located on the
Cumberland R just below the mouth of Hances Creek, 4 miles East South
East of Pineville. While the station has always been known as Page, the
post office was established as Calvin on Apr 3, 1908, with Belle
Pursifull, Post Master, and named for the local magistrate, Henry Calvin
Miracle. Until 1966 when the Board of Geographic names decided in favor
of Calvin, the community had also been identified as Page on topographic
maps.
Calvin post office circa 1968. The
lady pictured is my mother, Martha Jane Siler, she was postmaster there
from 1958 until her death in 1973. The time that she was postmaster the
post office was in four different buildings, this being the third.
Submitted by Calvin Siler
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Chenoa
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Chenoa
(Bell):
(Kay jay). Only a post office remains at the site of this coal town and
station on Clear Creek and Ky 190, 10 miles sw of Pineville. To this
point a 12-miles-1ong branch of the Cumberland River and Tennessee
(later L&N) RR was completed in Oct 1893. And here W. A. Chenoa
opened a cannel coal mine and established a post office, on Mar 13,
1894, to serve the camp that grew up around it. |
| Clear Creek |
Clear
Creek Springs (Bell): (Middlesboro North). This famed summer
resort is in Pine Mt. State Park, on Clear Creek and KY 1491,2 miles sw
of Pineville. Dr. Thomas Walker, the pre-Revolutionary War explorer of
much of se Kentucky, is said to have named this stream Clover Creek for
the profusion of wild clover growing on its banks. It was renamed later
for the clarity of the spring waters which discharge into the creek at
that point and which, in the early days, were believed to have curative
powers. J. M. C. Davis is credited with having established the resort in
the mid 19th cent. A post office called Clear Creek was in operation
here from 1855 to 1867. On a 1927 topographical map the community is
identified as Clear Springs Camp. |
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Colmar
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Cubage
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Cubage
(Bell):
(Varilla). This post office on KY 987 and Brownies Creek, a tributary of
the Cumberland R, was established on May 17, 1879,with Andrew Wilder,
Post Master, and named for Cubage Creek, a branch of Brownies nearly 2
miles below (w of) the present post office site, some 10 miles ese of
Pineville. According to tradition, the fIrst settlers found the words
"cub bear killed here" carved on a beech tree on the creek and
thus Cubage may have been a corruption of Cub Beech, a possible early
name for the stream. Bell Co's late historian. H.H. Fuson, reported but
tended to discount the contention that is was named for a Mr. Cubage (Cubbage?),
one of a party of pioneer hunters, who remained on the creek until he
could over come a case of frostbitten feet. |
| East Pineville |
East
Pineville (Bell): (Middlesboro North). This hamlet with extinct post
office is on US 119, across the Cumberland R from and 11/2 rni se of
Pineville. The local post office was established on Dec 3,1925, as Jayem
[djalehm], named for J[ohn] M[arshall] Robsion, Sr. (1873-1948), of
Barbourville who represented Kentucky's 9th District in the US Congress
from 1919 to 1930 and 1935 to 1948. |
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Four Mile
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Fourmile
(Bell): (Pineville). This coal town and L&N RR station with post
office are on the Cumberland R, less than \12 miles from the Knox Co
line and 2 miles nw of Pineville. The post office was established on Dec
16, 1899, with Edward L. Shell, Post Master. According to some, it was
named for its location 4 miles down the r from Pineville; others are
sure it was named for the length of Fourmile Creek, which joins the
Cumberland just above the post office. Perhaps it was both. |
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Fonde
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Frakes
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Frakes
(Bell): (Frakes). This post office serving the community traditionally
known as South America [sowth a/mehr/a/ka] is on KY 190 and Pine Creek,
141/2 miles sw of Pineville. This area, fIrst settled in the 1850s,
early received its nickname for its remoteness and relative
inaccessibility. In 1925, Indiana-born Rev. Hiram Milo Frakes, pastor of
a small Methodist church in Pineville, came into the area and persuaded
its natural leader, Bill Henderson, to donate land for a school, from
which grew the Henderson Settlement School. The local post office,
established as Linda on Apr 10, 1908, with James H. Hamblin, Post
Master, was renamed on June 1,1936, for Frakes. |
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Hulen
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Jenson
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Jenson
(Bell): (Pineville). This hamlet with recently discontinued post office
is on Straight Creek and KY 221, less than 3 milesEastNorth East of
Pineville. When the Straight Creek Branch of the L&N RR's Cumberland
Valley Division was extended from Pineville to Kettle Island in 1911 , a
station was established here and named for a highly respected
construction foreman. The Jenson post office opened on Jan 20, 1927, and
closed in 1975. |
| Kettle Island |
Kettle
Island (Bell): (Balkan). This coal town with post office is 1/2 miles up
Kettle Island Branch of Straight Creek, 4 1/2 milesEastNorth East of
Pineville, and a station of the same name on the Straight Creek Branch
of the Cumberland Valley Division of the L&N RR is 6 rail
milesEastNorth East of Pineville. The post office was established on Mar
15, 1912, with Thomas B. Hail, Post Master. According to one tradition,
local women used to do the family wash with a community kettle on a
small island in the creek where water and brushwood were plentiful. A
more likely explanation is that some early hunters used an old iron
kettle found buried on the island as a landmark to guide their friends
to good places to hunt or settle. In either case, the name was applied
in pioneer days, long before the coal town, rr station, and post office
were established. |
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Ingram
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Insull
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Middlesboro
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Middlesboro
(Bell): (Middlesboro North and South). This 3rd class city is I
rni w of the Cumberland Gap and 8 miles s of Pineville. At or near the
site of a pioneer Yellow Creek settlement made around 1810 by John
Turner of Virginia, Alexander Alan Arthur, a Canadian resources
developer, bought up thousands of acres of Yellow Creek bottom land,
attracted investment capital from a number of English businessmen, and
by 1889 began to build his city. The Middlesborough post office had
already been established on Sept 14, 1888, with George C. Whitlock, Post
Master, the name having been selected from a list of names allegedly
offered by the investors, or else suggested by a Mr. Watts, a hotel
owner at the Gap who had come from the English city of Middlesbrough.
Arthur's boom busted with the crash of 1893. In 1960 the Board on
Geographic Names ruled in favor of what was by then the preferred
spelling, Middlesboro, which the post office had assumed in 1894 and the
rr and a number of local busi- nesses had used for years. Yet by the Act
of Incorporation in 1890 it had been spelled "Middlesborough"
and this is still the official form. |
| Miracle |
Miracle
(Bell) (Balkan). This post office and station on the Kentucky &
Virginia RR (a branch of the L&N) lie where KY 987 crosses the
Cumberland R, 5 1/2 milesEastof Pineville. The post office, established
on May 16,1912, with Willie A. Hoskins, Post Master, was named for a
local family. |
| Pearl |
Pearl
(Whitley and Bell) p31 (Frakes). This settlement with extinct post
office is centered at the jct of KY 190 and 1595,13 miles se of
Williamsburg and 15 1/2 miles sw of PineviIIe. The post office was
established in Bell Co on June 17, 1907, and named for the daughter of
the first Post Master, James L. Fletcher. The post office, which moved
to the Whitley Co side in 1924, was discontinued in 1968. |
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Pineville
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Pineville
(Bell): (Pineville). This 4th class city and seat of Bell Co is on
the Cumberland R and US 25E and 119, 141 miles se of downtown
Louisville. The site was settled early (ca. 1781) since it was at the
point where the Wilderness Rd crossed the Cumberland R. Thus the
community was first called Cumberland Ford and the post office of this
name was established on Mar 31, 1818, with Moses Dorton, Post Master.
Though the settlement may have been aptly called Pineville as early as
1825, it was not until 1867 that the town was actually laid off. In 1869
J. J. Gibson donated land for the seat of Josh Bell Co, which had been
created 2 years before. The post office name was changed to Pineville in
1870, and the town was inc as Pineville in 1889. |
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Rella
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Slusher
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Straight Creek
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Straight Creek (Bell):
(Pineville). This coal town with post office and L&N RR station
extendsEastfor over 1 1/2 miles along KY 221 from its jct with KY 66, at
the forks of the creek for which it was named, and less than 1
milesEastNorth East of Pineville. The post office has been in operation
since Mar 8, 1900. The creek, a tributary of the Cumberland R, is aptly
named.
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| Tejay |
Tejay
(Bell): (Balkan). This L&N RR station and coal camp at the
mouth of Toms Creek on the Cumberland R, 7 milesEastof PineviIIe, was
established by T[homas] J[efferson] Asher (1848-1935), an extensive
landowner and one of the pioneer developers of the logging and coal
industries in se Kentucky. Its name was simply a spelling out of his
initials. Tejay never had its own post office. |
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Tinsley
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Tinsley
(Bell): (Artemus). This hamlet with post office is on KY 92 and
Greasy Creek, I miles above its confluence with the Cumberland R and 3
miles wnw of Pineville. The post office was established on Apr 9, 1900,
with Charles C. Smith, Post Master, and named for a local family
involved in early coal mine operations in that vicinity. The local
station on a spur from Yingling on the main line of the L&N RR's
Cumberland Valley Division is Surran, named for W. L. Surran, a local
trainmaster. |
| Varilla |
Varilla
(Bell): (Varilla). This coal town and station on the L&N RR's
Cumberland Valley Division are 5 milesEastof Pineville. T. J. Asher,
wealthy landowner and developer of the region's timber and coal
resources, established the town and named it for his wife Varilla (nee
Howard) (1848-1935). A post office was in operation here from 1912 to
1930. |
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Wasioto
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Wasioto
(Bell): (Middlesboro North). Little remains of a once prosperous sawmill
and later coal town on US 119 and the Cumberland R opposite Pineville's
present southern limits. In 1889 T. J. Asher built one of the largest
sawmills in se Kentucky at this site and, on Nov 5, 1889, established a
post office to which he allegedly gave the old Cherokee name for the
Cumberland Gap Ouasioto or "mountain pass." (See
also
Tejay.) |