Appalachian Community Histories – Gays Creek, Perry County: A Community Reshaped by Buckhorn Lake
Gays Creek is one of those Perry County places whose history survives in scattered but revealing records. The federal Geographic Names Information System identifies it as a populated place in Perry County, Kentucky, and Perry County still includes Gays Creek in its own official list of communities. That continuity matters, because the records also show that the community’s original site was altered dramatically by the creation of Buckhorn Lake.
A Community on the Middle Fork
The historical footprint of Gays Creek lies in the Buckhorn area northwest of Hazard. KyAtlas places it near the creek of the same name and notes that the original site stood near the mouth of the creek on the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River. The larger landscape around it belongs to the rugged Cumberland Plateau country that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers describes as a region of steep watersheds, narrow valleys, branching streams, and mineral bearing sedimentary rock. Kentucky Geological Survey mapping for Perry County also places Gays Creek within the county’s coal bearing terrain and Buckhorn quadrangle setting.
The Name and the Post Office
The strongest concise naming tradition says Gays Creek took its name from Henry Gay, remembered as an early settler and Revolutionary War veteran. That tradition appears in KyAtlas and in a Perry County post office summary drawn from Robert M. Rennick’s Kentucky place name work. The postal history is firmer. Genealogy Trails gives the establishment date of the Gays Creek post office as December 26, 1888, while KyAtlas states simply that it opened in 1888. By July 1916, the United States Official Postal Guide still listed Gays Creek, Kentucky, as an active post office, which confirms that the community had entered the regular federal mail network by the early twentieth century. A Leslie County place name study also warns researchers not to confuse the active Perry County Gays Creek office with a separate short lived Leslie County office of the same name.
Gays Creek on the Map
Maps help show how durable the community name was. A 1913 USGS Buckhorn quadrangle survives as an official historical topographic map, and later Buckhorn maps continued to cover the Gays Creek area. A 1961 Buckhorn quadrangle also identifies Gays Creek, showing that the name remained fixed on the landscape even after the area began to be reshaped by the Buckhorn project. Kentucky Geological Survey’s Perry County planning map likewise labels Gays Creek among the county’s communities and notes the abundance of both surface and underground coal mining in Perry County, which places Gays Creek within the larger extractive geography of eastern Kentucky.
Churches, Families, and Everyday Community Life
Mid twentieth century sources show Gays Creek as more than a point on a map. In 1952, the Gospel Herald was publishing correspondence from “Gays Creek, Kentucky,” which shows the community active enough to appear in denominational print. The Mennonite Yearbook and Directory then provides stronger institutional detail. One entry identifies Gays Creek Mennonite Church as dating to 1950, with David E. Showalter as pastor and seven members. By 1971, Mennonite records still listed Gays Creek, Kentucky 41745 as a Kentucky station, showing that the place remained part of that church network well after the first mission era.
Local newspapers add a more everyday texture. Hazard Herald items from 1958 named residents from Gays Creek in hospital notices and local columns, including Leslie Gay, Isaac Eversole, Finley Gay, and Sally Gay. Another 1958 issue listed Gays Creek businesses such as Combs Grocery and Riley Service Station. These are small references, but they matter because they show Gays Creek functioning as a lived community of households, kin networks, and local commerce rather than only as a postal or map label. In the mid 1960s, Perry County Board of Education accounts printed in the Hazard Herald also recorded rent paid to Gays Creek Baptist Church, tying church property to the county’s public institutional life.
Buckhorn Lake and the Remaking of Place
The single biggest change in Gays Creek’s history came with Buckhorn Lake. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers states that Buckhorn Lake was authorized under the Flood Control Act of 1938 and built on the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River in Leslie and Perry counties. KyAtlas says plainly that the original site of Gays Creek is now under Buckhorn Lake. A local history preserved by Bethel Camp explains what that meant on the ground. According to that account, the Mennonite church at Gays Creek stood in the floodplain of the new dam project, and the coming reservoir forced relocation decisions. Bethel Camp’s history says the Corps was willing to buy the church property and that one purpose of the 1957 camp purchase was to provide a place for mission personnel displaced by construction of the dam.
A Community That Endured
Even so, Gays Creek did not simply disappear. KyAtlas notes that the post office occupied several sites farther up the creek after the original location near the mouth was lost. Mennonite records still named Gays Creek in 1971, and Perry County still recognizes it today as one of its communities. County tourism material also places Eagle’s Landing, formerly known as the Gays Creek Campground, in the Gays Creek area near the backwaters of Buckhorn Lake. The history of Gays Creek, then, is not just a story of loss under a reservoir. It is also a story of adaptation, in which a creek name, a post office, churches, stores, family networks, and a local identity survived even after the landscape itself was reordered.
Sources & Further Reading
Bethel Camp. “History.” Accessed April 6, 2026. https://www.bethelcamp.org/history
FamilySearch. “Perry County, Kentucky Genealogy.” Accessed April 6, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Perry_County%2C_Kentucky_Genealogy
FamilySearch Catalog. “Land Records, 1821-1964.” Accessed April 6, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog/190103
Genealogy Trails. “Post Offices Perry County, KY.” Accessed April 6, 2026. https://genealogytrails.com/ken/perry/post_offices.html
Gospel Herald. “Gays Creek, Kentucky.” 1952. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/gospelherald195245dres/gospelherald195245dres_djvu.txt
The Hazard Herald. “The Hazard Herald: 1958-03-10.” Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/kd9833mw2f06/kd9833mw2f06_djvu.txt
The Hazard Herald. “The Hazard Herald: 1958-04-14.” Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/kd9s17sn0f1s/kd9s17sn0f1s_djvu.txt
The Hazard Herald. “The Hazard Herald: 1958-07-03.” Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/kd9ns0ks6w6g/kd9ns0ks6w6g_djvu.txt
The Hazard Herald. “The Hazard Herald: 1964-07-16.” Internet Archive. https://archive.org/download/kd9gq6qz2b2r/kd9gq6qz2b2r_text.pdf
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Perry County, Kentucky.” 2007. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/mc164_12.pdf
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Perry County Geology.” Accessed April 6, 2026. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/download/gwatlas/gwcounty/perry/PERRYGEO.pdf
KyAtlas. “Gays Creek, Kentucky.” Accessed April 6, 2026. https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-gays-creek.html
Mennonite Yearbook 1971. Scottdale, PA: Mennonite Publishing House, 1971. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/mennoniteyearboo62unse/mennoniteyearboo62unse_djvu.txt
Mennonite Yearbook and Directory. Scottdale, PA: Mennonite Publishing House, n.d. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/mennoniteyearboo4319unse/mennoniteyearboo4319unse_djvu.txt
Perry County Fiscal Court. “About Perry County.” Accessed April 6, 2026. https://perrycountyky.gov/about-perry-county/
Rennick, Robert M. “Perry County – Place Names.” 2016. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/121/
Rennick, Robert M. “Perry County – Post Offices.” 2000. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/273/
United States Post Office Department. United States Official Postal Guide. July 1916. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/unitedstatesoffi1916unit/unitedstatesoffi1916unit_djvu.txt
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville District. “Buckhorn Lake.” January 10, 2024. https://www.lrd.usace.army.mil/Missions/Projects/Article/3641099/buckhorn-lake/
U.S. Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System: Gays Creek.” The National Map. Accessed April 6, 2026. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/gaz-record/512293
U.S. Geological Survey. USGS 1:24,000-scale Quadrangle for Krypton, KY, 1954. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/HistoricalTopo/PDF/KY/24000/KY_Krypton_709036_1954_24000_geo.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey. USGS 1:62,500-scale Quadrangle for Buckhorn, KY, 1913. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/HistoricalTopo/PDF/KY/62500/KY_Buckhorn_804138_1913_62500_geo.pdf
Author Note: Gays Creek is one of those Appalachian communities where the records are scattered, but once they are pulled together a real place begins to reappear. What struck me most here was how post office records, church history, and Buckhorn Lake all helped tell the same story from different angles.