Appalachian Community Histories – Dice, Perry County: Sixteen Mile Creek and the Making of a Mountain Community
Dice is one of those eastern Kentucky communities that survives in pieces of evidence rather than in a long standalone town history. It still appears today on official Perry County community lists, on the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s county road map, and in the United States Postal Service locator, which means it is not just a remembered name but a continuing place on the county landscape.
Where Dice Sits on the Land
To understand Dice, it helps to start with the creeks before the community. The area belongs to the Lost Creek country of Perry and Breathitt counties, and early geological reporting treated the landscape around Sixteen Mile Creek as the more important identifier. In 1910 and 1918, Kentucky Geological Survey geologist James M. Hodge described Lost Creek and the upper reaches around Ten Mile, Fifteen Mile, and Sixteen Mile creeks as part of a broader coal-bearing mountain system, with multiple branches and coal openings marking the terrain long before modern road maps gave the area a clearer community label.
That older creek geography matters because it explains why Dice developed where it did. Robert M. Rennick’s work on Kentucky number place names notes that Ten, Fifteen, and Sixteen Mile creeks in Perry County were named for their distances upstream from the mouth of Lost Creek. Hodge’s earlier report shows the same drainage pattern in practical terms, moving up Lost Creek past Ten Mile, Fifteen Mile, and Sixteen Mile as he documented mines, branches, and landowners. In other words, Dice grew within a landscape whose naming system was already old and locally understood before Dice itself left much of a documentary footprint.
How the Post Office Gave Dice Its Identity
Like many Appalachian communities, Dice became most visible when the postal record fixed the name. Compiled postal histories summarized in accessible reference pages report that a Dice post office was first authorized in 1903 but not established at that time, that it stood near the mouth of Sixteen Mile Creek, and that the place name was remembered locally as having come from someone called Dice, Dicie, or Dicey rather than from a clearly documented geographic term. Those same summaries report that the post office actually opened in 1908, closed in 1911, reopened in 1923, closed again in 1936, and reopened in 1942. The modern USPS locator shows that Dice still has an active postal presence today at Sixteenmile Creek Road.
That postal history is important because Dice does not appear to have developed as a large incorporated town. Instead, it followed a common mountain pattern in which a post office, a road, nearby church life, and a cluster of families gave a place its lasting identity. The post office did not just serve mail. It gave residents a usable community name, helped anchor addresses and routines, and kept Dice legible to outsiders even when the place remained small.
What the Early Records Show
The strongest primary traces of Dice in the mid twentieth century come from local newspapers and county-style listings rather than from formal town histories. A 1958 issue of The Hazard Herald includes Dice repeatedly in delinquent tax and property style listings, attaching the name to specific residents and estates. Those scattered entries show that Dice was functioning as a real local address in county records, not just as a fading map label.
A 1965 Hazard Herald political profile gives an even better glimpse of the community’s social life. In that item, county judge candidate Harve Hensley stated that his wife, the former Sinde Hamilton, had been postmaster at Dice for the past twenty-three years, and that the family belonged to Lost Creek Community Church, where she served as treasurer and he as a deacon. That single paragraph ties together several of the institutions that often sustained a small mountain community: the post office, the church, kinship, and local public reputation.
A Very Small Place, But Not a Lost One
Dice was never a large place in the surviving written record. A search-visible snippet from Helen F. Randolph’s Perry County general history includes Dice in the county’s community and population listings and gives it a figure of 26, which fits the broader picture of Dice as a very small settlement whose importance was local rather than urban. That small scale helps explain why so much of its history survives indirectly, through maps, postal records, newspaper notices, and nearby creek names.
Still, small does not mean insignificant. Dice lasted because it remained useful to the people who lived there. Hodge’s reports show the older working landscape of Lost Creek and Sixteen Mile Creek. Newspaper records show families tied to the name. The post office record shows a place that closed, reopened, and endured. Modern county and postal records show that Dice is still present. For a community with only a light standalone paper trail, that is a meaningful kind of historical continuity.
Why Dice Matters in Perry County History
Dice matters because it represents the kind of place that made up much of Appalachian Kentucky. It was not a county seat, not a boomtown on the scale of Hazard’s largest coal-era settlements, and not a place that drew many outside chroniclers. But it was part of the lived geography of Perry County, rooted in creek names, tied to Lost Creek and Sixteen Mile Creek, sustained by a post office, and remembered through church and family networks. Its story is the story of how many mountain communities endured: quietly, locally, and long enough to remain on the map.
Sources & Further Reading
James Michael Hodge. Report on the Coals of the Three Forks of the Kentucky River: Beginning at Troublesome Creek on North Fork; at Beginning Branch on Middle Fork; at Sexton Creek on South Fork; and Extending to the Heads of the Respective Forks. Louisville, KY: Continental Printing Co., 1910. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://archive.org/details/reportoncoalsoft00hodgrich
Hodge, James Michael. Coals of the North Fork of Kentucky River in Perry and Portions of Breathitt and Knott Counties. Frankfort, KY: State Journal Company, 1918. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://archive.org/details/coalsofnorthfork00hodgrich
Rennick, Robert M. “Perry County – Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky, 2000. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/273/
Rennick, Robert M. “Perry County – Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection, 2016. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/121/
Rennick, Robert M. “Kentucky ‘Number’ Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/
Randolph, Helen F. Perry County – General History. Morehead State University Digitized Collections. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1053&context=kentucky_county_histories
United States Geological Survey. “Dice.” Geographic Names Information System. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/summary/491378
United States Geological Survey. Hazard North, KY 7.5-minute topographic map. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/PDF/KY/KY_Hazard_North_20160607_TM_geo.pdf
United States Geological Survey. Hazard North, KY Historical Map Geopdf 7.5×7.5 Grid 24000-Scale 1954. USGS Store. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://store.usgs.gov/product/263489
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. State Primary Road System: Perry County. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, February 2025. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/SPRS%20Maps/Perry.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Perry County State Primary Road System Lists. July 1, 2025. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/State%20Primary%20Road%20System%20Lists/Perry.pdf
United States Postal Service. “Dice Post Office.” USPS Location Finder. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://tools.usps.com/find-location.htm?location=1360832
The Hazard Herald. April 28, 1958. Internet Archive. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://archive.org/download/kd9r20rr232h/kd9r20rr232h_text.pdf
The Hazard Herald. May 20, 1965. Internet Archive. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://archive.org/download/kd9dv1cj8g5s/kd9dv1cj8g5s_text.pdf
Perry County Public Library. “The New ‘Perry County Newspaper & Yearbook Digital Archive’ Is Live.” January 9, 2024. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://perrycountypl.org/the-new-perry-county-newspaper-yearbook-digital-archive-is-live/
Kentucky Digital Newspaper Program. “KDNP.” University of Kentucky Libraries. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://kentuckynewspapers.org/program/
Perry County Clerk. “Online Land Records.” Accessed April 4, 2026. https://perry.countyclerk.us/records-center/online-land-records/
FamilySearch. “Land Records, 1821-1964, Perry County, Kentucky.” Accessed April 4, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog/190103
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. “Archives & Reference.” Accessed April 4, 2026. https://kdla.ky.gov/Archives-and-Reference/Pages/default.aspx
Author Note: Small communities like Dice rarely get a long standalone history, which is exactly why I wanted to piece this one together from maps, postal records, and local newspapers. This article is for readers who know Lost Creek country well and for those trying to recover places that nearly slipped out of the written record.