Appalachian Community Histories – Harveyton, Perry County: From Staub Post Office to Harveyton
Harveyton was one of the many Perry County communities shaped almost entirely by coal. It stood on First Creek north of Hazard and above Blue Diamond, and unlike older mountain settlements whose history runs through churches, courthouses, or early land grants, Harveyton’s clearest surviving paper trail runs through coal-company records, mine reports, postal history, census geography, and maps. Those records make it plain that Harveyton was built as a company place and that its identity stayed tied to coal for decades.
The Harvey Mine and the Birth of the Community
The strongest direct source for Harveyton’s early development is the 1949 Tax Court case involving Harvey Coal Corporation. That case states that Harvey Coal Co. was organized under Tennessee law early in 1915 and in May of that year acquired a leasehold on the Harvey Mine at Harveyton, Kentucky. In 1917 the company subleased the property to Hazard-Jellico Coal Co., and that arrangement continued until 1924, when Hazard-Jellico became insolvent. The property then reverted to Harvey Coal Co. on October 31, 1924. Just weeks later, on November 19, 1924, Harvey Coal Corporation was organized to take over and operate the Harvey Mine properties. That sequence shows that Harveyton was not simply a named hollow that later attracted mining. Its modern identity was bound up with the mine from the beginning.
From Staub to Harveyton
The community’s postal history helps show how a mining place became a recognized town name. Secondary postal-history work by Robert M. Rennick and the Kentucky Atlas summary agree that the post office first opened under the name Staub in 1916 and was renamed Harveyton on May 26, 1923. By the mid-1920s the Harveyton name was clearly in active use, and by the early 1930s it had become the established station and community name. That matters because post office names often fixed the public identity of eastern Kentucky coal camps. In Harveyton’s case, the change from Staub to Harveyton reflected the growing dominance of the Harvey Coal operation over local place identity.
Harveyton in the 1920s and 1930s
By 1930 Harveyton had become a substantial coal camp rather than a minor siding. Compiled historical sources describe the town as having several hundred company houses, and Kentucky Atlas places its population at about 700 in 1930. The census geography from that era also shows Harveyton clearly enough to be treated as precinct 43 in Magisterial District 4 in Perry County. Taken together, those sources show a place that had grown into one of the recognizable mining communities in the First Creek and Hazard area by the interwar years.
Mine records from the period reinforce that picture. Kentucky State Department of Mines annual-report snippets for 1924, 1925, and 1928 list Harveyton in Perry County mine tables, showing the mining operation as an active and reportable part of the county coal economy. By late 1937 the Federal Register still listed Harvy Coal Corporation at Harveyton in the Hazard No. 6 field, proof that Harveyton remained an identified coal point in federal price-index records. Trade reporting in Coal Age adds even more detail. One 1936 article described Harvey Coal Corporation’s reconstruction of the Harveyton tipple, including new screening, crushing, loading, and mixing facilities at an approximate cost of $40,000. Another notice corrected a caption to make clear that a pictured plant was Harvey Coal Corporation’s installation at Harveyton in the Hazard field. A separate Coal Age reference noted that during 1935 all coal produced by Harvey Coal Corporation in Kentucky was shot with Cardox, a detail that suggests continuing efforts to modernize production and preparation.
A Midcentury Company Town
One of the best surviving snapshots of Harveyton comes from the 1956 U.S. Geological Survey study of public and industrial water supplies in eastern Kentucky. By then Harveyton had a population served of 560, and the water system was still owned by Harvey Coal Co. The report states that the supply came from two wells and one mine about half a mile east of the company store. Water from the wells was used for domestic purposes, while water from the mine was used partly for washing coal and partly for domestic purposes. The town had a 10,000 gallon hillside tank and an average daily pumpage of 37,000 gallons when in operation. That is an unusually vivid look at how a coal camp functioned in everyday life. Harveyton was not only a mine. It was a company-run community whose water, domestic routine, and industrial work were still closely tied together in the 1950s.
Harveyton on the Map After the Boom Years
Even after the great coal-camp era began to fade, Harveyton remained visible in federal records. The 1950 Census search identifies Blue Diamond-Harveyton as an unincorporated place with a formal boundary description, showing that census officials still treated it as a real community on the ground. The post office, according to the Kentucky Atlas summary, remained open until 1965. Long after that, Harveyton continued to appear on Hazard North topographic mapping, including modern US Topo editions. That survival on maps matters because many old coal camps slipped out of everyday use and out of federal cartography. Harveyton did not entirely disappear. Its name stayed fixed in the landscape even as the company-town world that created it diminished.
Why Harveyton Matters
Harveyton’s history is the history of a coal camp made legible by the records industry left behind. The company’s own legal history shows when the Harvey Mine was acquired and reorganized. Postal records show when the place name settled into Harveyton. Mine reports, federal price tables, and trade journals show that the operation remained active and modernizing into the 1930s. The USGS water-supply study shows that by the 1950s Harveyton was still functioning as a company-centered community with hundreds of people served. What survives, then, is not just the memory of a mine, but the outline of a whole Appalachian place shaped by coal, company houses, a store, a post office, and the daily routines of families living on First Creek.
Sources & Further Reading
Baker, J. A., and W. E. Price Jr. Public and Industrial Water Supplies of the Eastern Coal Field Region, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Circular 369. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1956. https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1956/0369/report.pdf
Coal Age. 41, no. 2 (1936). https://delibra.bg.polsl.pl/Content/9061/P-375_Vol41_Nr2.pdf
Coal Age. 41, no. 11 (1936). https://delibra.bg.polsl.pl/Content/9070/P-375_Vol41_Nr11.pdf
Federal Register. 2 Fed. Reg. 2566 (December 3, 1937). https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/fedreg/fr002/fr002234/fr002234.pdf
Harvey Coal Corp. v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 12 T.C. 596 (U.S. Tax Court 1949). https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/harvey-coal-corp-v-885306748
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report of the State Department of Mines for the Year Ending December 31, 1924. Lexington: State Department of Mines, 1925. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1924.pdf
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report of the State Department of Mines for the Year Ending December 31, 1925. Lexington: State Department of Mines, 1926. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1925.pdf
National Archives. “Search | 1950 Census: Perry County, Kentucky.” Accessed April 6, 2026. https://1950census.archives.gov/search/?county=Perry&page=1&state=KY
Postal Bulletin. No. 13816. Washington, DC: U.S. Post Office Department, July 3, 1925. https://www.uspostalbulletins.com/PDF/Vol46_Issue13816_19250703.pdf
Randolph, H. F. Perry County – General History. Works Progress Administration and Historical Records Survey. Accessed April 6, 2026. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1053&context=kentucky_county_histories
Rennick, Robert M. “Perry County – Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection, 2016. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/121
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Perry County, Kentucky.” La Posta: A Journal of American Postal History 34, no. 2. Accessed April 6, 2026. https://www.lapostapub.com/Backissues/LP34-2.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey. “Hazard North, Kentucky.” US Topo Map. Accessed April 6, 2026. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/Current/PDF/KY/KY_Hazard_North.pdf
“Harveyton, Kentucky.” Kentucky Atlas & Gazetteer. Accessed April 6, 2026. https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-harveyton.html
Author Note: I always enjoy digging into Perry County coal camp history because communities like Harveyton survive through mine reports, maps, and the details of everyday life. I hope this piece helps preserve one more First Creek community whose story still deserves to be remembered.