Abandoned Appalachia Series – The Jones Motel of Harlan County
Highway travelers who swing off modern US 421 into Baxter, just north of Harlan, still pass a low concrete motor court tucked against the hillside. Kudzu creeps over railings, windows gape without glass, and a “No Trespassing” sign faces the road where a neon beacon once glowed. This is the shell of the Jones Motel, a roadside stop that bridged the high tide of coal traffic and the long, slow downturn that followed.
Today it reads like an ordinary abandoned building to anyone rushing by. Look closer through postcards, maps, and local memory, though, and it turns back into what it once was: a family-run motor court at the fork of the Cumberland, where coal trucks, tourists, and hometown families all crossed paths.
A crossroads in coal country
The Jones Motel sat at Baxter, an unincorporated community where KY 72 meets the old alignment of US 421 at the confluence of Martin’s Fork and Clover Fork of the Cumberland River. Mid-century highway maps and later planning documents show a small cluster of symbols here: filling stations, a garage, and a motel drawn together at a tight bend in the valley road.
Across the way stood Smith Garage, an auto shop that shared the same traffic stream from coal camps, Harlan, and points beyond. Together the motel, garage, and nearby restaurants formed a classic mid-century roadside node. Travelers could pull off the highway, fuel up, get a radiator checked, and find a room without ever leaving the little hillside bowl of Baxter.
The spot was hard to miss. A coal monument nearby, celebrated in modern guide sites and local photos, turned the junction into a kind of roadside shrine to Harlan’s industry. For many drivers the monument, the garage bays, and the bright motel sign were the visual cue that they had reached Harlan County’s gateway.
Matt Jones and the making of a motor court
The story of the motel itself comes into focus first through postcards. Chrome cards from local publisher Glenn Durham show a two-story, L-shaped motor court facing the highway, with cars angled toward a simple painted sign that reads JONES MOTEL. The cards are standard 3.5 by 5.5 inches and list Harlan, Kentucky, as the city.
On at least one Durham card, the back panel credits “Matt Jones, owner-operator,” a small line that tells us who staked his name and labor on this stretch of highway. A linen card postmarked 1952 and a real-photo postcard of the same era show the place already in full operation by the early fifties, with the parking lot full and the building finished enough to be a proud advertising subject.
Those dates line up with what we know more broadly about Baxter’s growth. After the Second World War, traffic on US 421 increased sharply. State highway maps revised in 1950 and 1959 both highlight the Baxter area as a service node, and later planning documents for the “Baxter bypass” treat the motel complex as an established landmark. The evidence suggests that Matt Jones built his motor court in the late 1940s or very early 1950s, just as post-war motorists, coal payrolls, and better roads converged.
Rooms, tile baths, and a ninety-foot pool
The postcards do more than prove that the motel existed. They also tell us how it wanted to be seen.
On one lithographed card, the printed description proudly advertises “rooms with tile baths,” hot-water heat, and a “large 90-foot pool,” along with the motel’s position on US Highways 119 and 421. The publisher credit lists Durham and a commercial press, and the phone number is printed in a style that matches mid-century exchanges. The combination of tile baths and central heat placed the Jones Motel a step above the bare-bones tourist courts that still dotted rural Kentucky at mid-century.
The pool gets special emphasis in both printed descriptions and later oral memory. Modern enthusiasts on the Dead Motels USA blog have shared Google Street View comparisons and note that “allegedly there is a massive pool behind it, also abandoned,” a rumor that lines up neatly with the postcard claiming a ninety-foot basin. For many Harlan County residents who comment on Facebook today, childhood memories of the motel start with summer swimming at that hillside pool and drift outward to Sunday dinners, family gatherings, and the simple pleasure of watching out-of-town license plates pull in.
Inside, the motel rooms followed the standard motor-court pattern of the era. Postcard views and early family photographs shared on Pinterest boards of “Old Pictures of Harlan” show a two-story block with exterior doors opening directly onto the balcony and parking lot. Classic mid-century cars sit just steps from the doors, and the whole structure seems cradled by trees that climb the steep hill behind it.
A full roadside complex: restaurant, gas, and garage
The Jones Motel did not stand alone. Together with Smith Garage, a small diner, and fuel pumps that changed brands over time, it formed a one-stop roadside complex.
Your earlier research on Smith Garage shows that the garage operated at 192 State Highway 72 and that Jones Motel’s pumps carried Texaco branding in the early fifties, switching to Sinclair by the mid-sixties. That made the motel both a place to sleep and a convenient fuel and food stop for coal trucks and vacationers heading toward the Smokies or back toward Lexington.
Newspaper evidence from the Harlan Daily Enterprise completes the picture. In at least one restaurant advertisement, a café on the Harlan-Baxter Road advertised its location as “across from Jones Motel,” using the motor court as a landmark that readers could instantly place. The wording suggests that by the mid-century years the motel’s name carried enough weight that other businesses hitched their directions to it.
Travel guides kept pace. An entry for “Jones Motel” appears in a 1984 Kentucky travel guide cataloged in the Kenton County Public Library’s GenKY finding aids, showing that even after the coal boom had faded and new motels appeared closer to US 119 and the US 25E corridor, the Baxter motor court was still considered a legitimate listing.
Shifting roads and shrinking traffic
If postcards and travel directories chart the rise of the motel, highway plans and oral history help explain its decline.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Kentucky Department of Highways began designing a relocation of US 421 around Baxter. Right-of-way plans for the “Baxter bypass” project show the new four-lane alignment sweeping away from the old road and cutting a wider, straighter path toward Harlan. Structures near the old junction, including the motel and its neighboring garage, are labeled as existing roadside businesses that would soon sit on a quieter spur.
When the bypass opened, long-haul traffic no longer had to thread through Baxter’s tight curve at the coal monument. Trucks and tourists alike took the new route. The old Harlan-Baxter Road became a local connector rather than the primary through highway. For a business that had grown up on visibility and convenience, that shift was a major blow.
At the same time, Harlan County’s coal employment contracted. Federal data and county histories alike trace a steep drop in mining jobs after the 1950s high point, with every downturn reducing the number of traveling salesmen, coal inspectors, and job-seeking miners who once filled the Jones Motel’s rooms.
Local memories suggest that the motel adapted by relying more on longer term boarders and fewer overnight tourists. Some recall truck drivers or miners staying for weeks at a time. Others remember that the on-site restaurant grew quieter, with regular full meals giving way to limited hours or closing entirely.
Late years and closure
Pinning down an exact closing date is difficult without full access to deed books and phone directories. The fragmentary evidence we do have points to a long twilight.
Older residents writing on Facebook remember the motel as “a nice, clean place to stay” and express sadness that “they just let it rot down,” wording that hints at a later period when the building stood empty but still structurally sound. The Kentucky travel guide listing in 1984 suggests that rooms were still available at least into the early eighties. Oral accounts in Harlan history groups recall that the pool closed around the same general era, matching a broader trend of small motels shedding amenities as maintenance costs outpaced revenue.
By the early 2000s, online forums and video content shift from treating the Jones Motel as a functioning business to treating it as a curiosity. A YouTube walk-around posted in the 2010s shows plywood on some doors, broken glass around others, and large “No Trespassing” warnings nailed to the office area. The narrator pauses to point out the seriousness of the signs and the degree of decay in the balcony and roof lines.
Dead Motels USA’s 2024 feature confirms the visual impression. Their side-by-side comparisons of vintage postcards and modern Street View frames show the same building footprint, but where chrome cards once showed bright paint and lined-up sedans, modern images show sagging balconies and vegetation climbing the rails. A trailer blocks part of the old parking area, further signaling that the property has entered a period of informal reuse and abandonment rather than any organized restoration.
The motel in memory and material culture
For a generation that grew up in Harlan County during the motel’s heyday, Jones Motel is less a ruin than a bundle of remembered scenes.
Comments in local Facebook groups describe teenagers sneaking a look at cars with out-of-state plates, families dropping by the restaurant after church, and children learning to swim in the hillside pool. In these recollections the motel is both a business and a social backdrop, one of several places where the wider world brushed past Harlan’s tight valleys.
Postcards have become their own miniature archive of that world. Chrome views of the motel now circulate on auction sites like eBay, on postcard dealers such as OldPostcards.com, and in the Appalachian Postcards Collection at the University of Kentucky Libraries. Collectors trade them as attractive examples of mid-century motel art, while local historians treat them as documentary evidence for architecture, branding, and the appearance of Baxter at different points in time.
Modern photographers have added another layer of documentation. A 2025 Flickr set by photographer Kala Thornsbury captures the motel and Smith Garage from multiple angles, showing the full façade, rear hillside, and the relationship between the old motor court and the present highway. Those images, paired with video, create a kind of visual bridge between the pristine chrome postcard era and the current state of overgrowth and rot.
Abandoned, but not forgotten
Today the Jones Motel stands in a kind of suspended state. Vines and brush press against the balcony rail. The doors that remain are weathered, and the rooflines show stress. It is not a safe place to explore, and property owners have made clear through posted signs that they do not welcome visitors inside the structure. Anyone interested in the motel’s history should respect those boundaries and experience the site from the roadside or through photographs and archival materials rather than by entering an unstable building.
Yet even in its current condition, the motel tells a story to anyone willing to read it. The concrete shell, the remnants of signage, and the faint trace of the pool behind the building all speak of the years when Harlan County’s roadside landscape was dotted with businesses that were small in scale but huge in local impact.
For Appalachian historians, the Jones Motel offers a useful case study in how to reconstruct a place that has nearly slipped from the record. A handful of postcards, some highway plans, a travel guide listing, scattered newspaper ads, and the living memory of former guests can be stitched together into a narrative that honors both the people who built the motel and the community that used it.
If you have postcards, snapshots, or stories tied to the Jones Motel, consider sharing them with local archives or Appalachianhistorian.org. Every saved image and remembered detail helps fix this small motor court more firmly in the historical record, ensuring that Baxter’s old roadside landmark remains part of Harlan County’s story long after the concrete finally gives way to the hillside behind it.
Sources & Further Reading
CardCow. “Jones Motel, Harlan, Kentucky.” Chrome postcard listing, Durham publisher, 3.5 x 5.5 in. CardCow.com. https://www.cardcow.com/10842/harlan-kentucky-jones-motel/
CardCow. “Harlan (Harlan, Kentucky) – Jones Motel.” In “Harlan (Harlan, Kentucky)” postcard category. CardCow.com. https://www.cardcow.com/c/67450/kentucky-harlan/
CardCow. “Jones Motel Harlan, KY.” Unused chrome postcard listing. CardCow.com. https://www.cardcow.com/search3.php?catnarrow%5B%5D=More+Topics&condition=unused&country=United+States&scolor=gr
OldPostcards.com. “Jones Motel – Harlan, Kentucky KY Postcard.” OldPostcards.com. https://www.oldpostcards.com/uspostcards/kentucky-harlan.html
OldPostcards.com. “Jones motel Harlan Kentucky Postcard.” OldPostcards.com. https://www.oldpostcards.com/uspostcards/kentucky/ky_yy_9039-jones-motel.html
eBay (The Vintage Paperboy). “Vintage 1940’s Postcard Jones Motel Highway 119 and 421 Harlan Kentucky.” eBay listing 294185189950. https://www.ebay.com/itm/294185189950
eBay (The Magic Postcard Store). “Jones Motel HARLAN Kentucky RPPC Vintage Roadside Photo Postcard 1952.” eBay listing 223787168602. https://www.ebay.com/itm/223787168602
eBay. “Postcard Harlan KY Jones Motel.” Printed (lithograph) postcard listing 236381535953. https://www.ebay.com/itm/236381535953
WorthPoint. “1920s–1950s Kentucky Motel/Roadside Postcards (14) … 1956 Harlan, KY Postcard – Jones Motel – Roadside Motel – 28 Rooms.” Auction archive entry. https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1920s-1950s-kentucky-motel-roadside-2853722955
University of Kentucky Libraries, Special Collections Research Center. “Wish You Were Here: Visit Every Corner of the Commonwealth with UK Libraries’ Postcard Collection.” News release, March 3, 2025. https://libraries.uky.edu/news/wish-you-were-here-visit-every-corner-commonwealth-uk-libraries-postcard-collection
Berea College Special Collections and Archives. “General Highway Map Harlan County Kentucky, 1950.” In Collection of United States Maps and Atlases (BCA 0291). https://bereaarchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/archival_objects/163926
Kentucky Department of Highways. General Highway Map: Harlan County, Kentucky. 1959 ed. Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Map Archives. https://transportation.ky.gov/maps/historic/har1959.pdf
Harlan Daily Enterprise. “The 711 For Restaurant – Harlan Baxter Road Across from Jones Motel (Sunday Menu).” Display advertisement, p. 4. Accessed via Newspapers.com. https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/1015498163/
Kala Thornsbury (Kala_T). “Jones Motel and Smith’s Garage: Harlan, KY.” Flickr photo set, taken April 6, 2025, uploaded April 14, 2025. https://www.flickr.com/photos/202678837%40N08/54451968150
Dead Motels USA. “Jones Motel of Harlan, Kentucky Is Abandoned and Overgrown.” Tumblr post, August 14, 2024. https://deadmotelsusa.com/post/758840329626632192/jones-motel-of-harlan-kentucky-is-abandoned-and
Dead Motels USA (@deadmotelsusa). “Kentucky is one of those neglected states that… Jones Motel of Harlan is abandoned and overgrown.” Instagram post. https://www.instagram.com/p/C_OJUFsuhi1/
Facebook. “Abandoned Jones Motel and Smith’s Garage (Harlan KY).” Post with member recollections of the site in group “Harlan County Kentucky.” https://www.facebook.com/groups/326448452015332/posts/1404087197584780/
Facebook. Comment “I delivered the Harlan Daily Enterprise to Mr. Jones… They lived in Baxter close to the Jones Motel” in group “The Purple Devils (Wallins Creek).” https://www.facebook.com/groups/Wallinscreek/posts/2967513276739467/
Pinterest. “Old Pictures of Harlan” board by Amanda Napier, including historic images of Baxter and Jones Motel. https://www.pinterest.com/stuckntherain2/old-pictures-of-harlan/
Facebook. Threads on the Baxter coal monument and intersection using Jones Motel as a landmark, in group “Growing Up in Kentucky” and related Harlan groups. Examples: https://www.facebook.com/groups/789010344491250/posts/4242678695791047/ and https://www.facebook.com/groups/789010344491250/posts/8361720173886858/
Roadside America. “Baxter, Kentucky: Coal Monument.” RoadsideAmerica.com. https://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/25499
Roadside America. “Coal Monument – Baxter, KY (Map).” RoadsideAmerica.com. https://www.roadsideamerica.com/map/25499
Visit Appalachian Triangle (Kentucky Department of Tourism). “Baxter Coal Monument.” Attraction listing. https://www.visitatky.com/things-to-do-categories/music-culture
University of Kentucky Libraries, Special Collections Research Center. “Appalachia Special Collections: Images.” Research guide. https://libguides.uky.edu/SCRC/appalachia/images
University of Kentucky Libraries, Special Collections Research Center. “Appalachia Special Collections: Starting Your Research.” Overview guide. https://libguides.uky.edu/SCRC/appalachia
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. Postcards from Appalachia (Ms-2015-032). Collection guide. https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/resources/2982
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Project Details – US 421, Harlan County.” Planning page. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/Pages/Project-Details.aspx?Project=US+421+Harlan+County+DNA
WYMT News. “Construction Underway for Road Project Near KY-VA Border.” March 10, 2025. https://www.wymt.com/2025/03/10/construction-underway-road-project-near-ky-va-border/
Harlan Enterprise. “Long-Awaited U.S. 421 Project Becomes Reality.” January 31, 2024. https://harlanenterprise.net/2024/01/31/long-awaited-u-s-421-project-becomes-reality/
Harlan County Tourism. “Explore Harlan.” Heritage and attractions listing including Baxter/Harlan historic sites. https://www.harlancountytrails.com/explore/harlan/
Author’s Note: Jones Motel is a must see when you are traveling to Harlan, even if you only take it in from the roadside and respect the posted signs. Its empty rooms, sagging balconies, and hillside setting make it one of the most haunting survivors of Harlan County’s coal age. It feels eerie especially at night, when the dark trees close in and the old motor court seems to watch the highway instead of the other way around.