Appalachian Community Histories – Woodland Park, Perry County: A River Neighborhood Beside Hazard
Woodland Park is one of those Perry County places that is easier to find in pieces than in one complete town history. It does not appear as a large incorporated place with a single founding story. Instead, it comes into view through official geographic-name records, USGS topographic maps, bridge records, local newspaper mentions, highway planning documents, and the flood history of Hazard and the North Fork Kentucky River.
The Geographic Names Information System, better known as GNIS, is the federal government’s official repository for geographic names. USGS explains that GNIS records define recognized names by state, county, topographic map, and geographic coordinates, and the downloadable GNIS data are drawn from that federal repository. That matters for Woodland Park because the place is best understood first as a named community or neighborhood in Perry County, not as a separate city government with a conventional municipal archive.
Modern and historic mapping places Woodland Park in the Hazard South map area. A USGS Hazard South topographic map labels Hazard, Farler, Woodland Park, Frew, Dow, Jeff, Fourseam, Viper, and other nearby places in the same mapped landscape. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s Perry County Biennial Highway Plan Projects map also labels Woodland Park among Perry County communities, which shows that the name remained useful in official transportation geography.
The Bridge Into Woodland Park
The most visible Woodland Park-specific historical clue is the bridge. Historic bridge references identify the Old Woodland Park Bridge as a lost through truss bridge over the North Fork Kentucky River on KY 2448 in Hazard. HistoricBridges.org lists it as a Pratt through truss, built in 1934, with a total length of 359.8 feet and a span length of 125.9 feet. The same record gives its location in Perry County and notes that the bridge has been replaced.
That bridge helps explain Woodland Park’s place in local memory. It was not simply a point on a map. It was a crossing between East Main Street, the river corridor, and the residential side of the North Fork. In places like Hazard, where steep hills and river bends shape nearly every road, a bridge can define how people understand a neighborhood. Woodland Park’s name endured partly because people crossed into it.
Bridgehunter likewise identifies the Old Woodland Park Bridge as a lost through truss bridge over the North Fork Kentucky River on KY 2448 in Hazard and notes that it was replaced. These secondary bridge databases should not be treated as county courthouse records, but they are valuable guides because they preserve bridge type, route, crossing, construction year, and replacement status.
The River Setting
Woodland Park belongs to the Hazard river landscape. The North Fork Kentucky River is not background scenery here. It is the reason the road bends, the bridge mattered, and flooding shaped the history of the neighborhood.
USGS maintains monitoring location 03277500, North Fork Kentucky River at Hazard, Kentucky. The monitoring page identifies the station as a USGS water-data site and notes that it is operated in cooperation with the City of Hazard, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Louisville District, and the USGS Federal Priority Streamgages program.
In 2018, USGS published Flood-Inundation Maps for the North Fork Kentucky River at Hazard, Kentucky. The report covered a 7.1-mile reach of the river and was prepared in cooperation with the Kentucky Silver Jackets and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Louisville District. It connected flood maps to the Hazard streamgage, station 03277500, and explained that the maps estimate the extent and depth of flooding at selected river stages.
The purpose was practical as much as scientific. USGS explained that these maps, combined with current river-stage data and National Weather Service forecast information, give emergency managers and residents information useful for evacuations, road closures, and postflood recovery. In Woodland Park’s case, that means the neighborhood should be read as part of Hazard’s long relationship with the river, not as an isolated residential name.
Flood Memory in Hazard and Woodland Park’s Corridor
The most dramatic federal flood record for this area is the 1957 flood. USGS summarized the January and February 1957 flooding as the result of heavy rains over southeastern Kentucky and adjacent areas of West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee. The affected basins included the Big Sandy, Kentucky, Cumberland, and Tennessee Rivers, and many streams reached maximum discharges of record.
The National Weather Service office at Jackson preserves the Hazard side of that story in especially direct language. It reports that most communities along the North Fork Kentucky River and its tributaries were damaged in some form, with severe damage at Hazard and surrounding areas in Perry County. At Hazard, the North Fork reached a peak stage of 37.5 feet, highways leading into town were blocked, utilities were out, main streets were inundated with as much as 17 feet of water, six people died in Hazard and surrounding areas, more than 300 residences and 180 commercial buildings were damaged, and at least 70 buildings were destroyed.
The original USGS Water-Supply Paper adds more detail about the broader county damage. It reported that 90 percent of coal mines in Pike, Floyd, Letcher, and Perry Counties were forced to close because of water, disrupted communications, washed-out roads, or damaged railroad beds. It also reported serious school damage in Perry County, including major damage to the State Vocational School at Hazard.
For Woodland Park, the lesson is that any history of the place has to include flood geography. A neighborhood beside the North Fork, reached by a bridge and tied to Hazard’s roads, lived inside the same river system that shaped the town’s disasters, transportation routes, and public planning.
Coal Country Around the Neighborhood
Woodland Park’s specific name does not need a coal camp origin story to belong to coal history. Its location near Hazard places it within the North Fork Kentucky River coal region, where early twentieth-century surveys, rail lines, roads, and settlements were shaped by the coal industry.
James M. Hodge’s 1918 report, Coals of the North Fork of Kentucky River in Perry and Portions of Breathitt and Knott Counties, is one of the strongest early sources for the surrounding coalfield. The Internet Archive record identifies the work as a 1918 publication by Hodge, published at Frankfort by the State Journal Company, and focused on coal in Kentucky.
The Kentucky Geological Survey’s later Quaternary Geologic Map of the Hazard South 7.5-minute Quadrangle places the map area in Perry and Leslie Counties and in the larger Eastern Kentucky Coal Field of the Appalachian Basin. The map summary describes the geology as Pennsylvanian sedimentary rocks and Quaternary deposits, with sandstone, siltstone, shale, coal, and limestone of the Breathitt Group. It also states that coal mining in Perry County had a history of more than 100 years and that Perry County alone had produced about 593 million tons of coal by the time of the report.
That geology matters to local history because the same narrow valleys that held roads, houses, and bridges also held coal seams, rail access, floodplains, and unstable slopes. The KGS map notes that flooding is common in areas underlain by alluvium, especially in narrow stream valleys between steep slopes, and that landslides have damaged roads, railroads, and housing development in the Hazard area.
Woodland Park as a Lived Neighborhood
The strongest proof that Woodland Park was not only a map label comes from local newspapers. The Hazard Herald used the name in ordinary community life, the way papers often did for neighborhoods that residents already understood.
In April 1958, The Hazard Herald reported that Mrs. M. I. Dillard entertained with a Japanese bridge party at her home in Woodland Park. That small society note is useful because it places Woodland Park in everyday domestic life, not only in bridge engineering or state mapping.
In September 1958, another Hazard Herald notice advertised plumbing and repairing service in Woodland Park, with telephone information included. This is the kind of ordinary classified reference that local historians should not overlook. It shows the name functioning in the local economy, in directions, and in the daily business of Hazard-area residents.
Taken together, those newspaper mentions suggest Woodland Park was a recognized residential place by the mid-twentieth century. It may not have produced the kind of paper trail that a county seat, coal company town, post office, or incorporated municipality would leave behind, but it still appeared in the lived geography of Perry County.
Roads, Planning, and Modern Hazard
Woodland Park also remains part of Hazard’s modern transportation and planning language. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s official bicycle and pedestrian planning page lists an approved Hazard, Perry County Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan for 2021. The Kentucky River Area Development District also lists the Hazard Perry County Bike Ped Plan among county bicycle and pedestrian plans, and describes KRADD as a quasi-governmental agency working with city and county governments in the region.
The plan itself describes its purpose as identifying, designing, constructing, and rehabilitating walkways and future bikeways that connect neighborhoods, business centers, parks, and schools. That modern planning language fits Woodland Park’s older history. The neighborhood’s identity has long depended on connection, especially connection across the river and into Hazard.
Highway planning documents also keep the Woodland Park Bridge name alive. A 2026 Kentucky legislative road-project document includes a Perry County project described as reconstruction from Woodland Park Bridge to KY 15X in Hazard. A 2021 Kentucky River Area Development District transportation meeting record similarly described reconstruction from Woodland Park Bridge to KY 15X in Hazard.
Reading Woodland Park the Right Way
Woodland Park’s history is not the story of a lost town with a clean beginning and end. It is the story of a named place in the orbit of Hazard, located in a river corridor where bridges, roads, floods, coal geology, and neighborhood life overlapped.
The best records do not point to a single founder or one dramatic event. They point to a place made practical by a bridge, marked by maps, remembered in local notices, and shaped by the North Fork Kentucky River. Woodland Park belonged to the same Hazard landscape that saw coalfield growth, flood disaster, highway change, and the slow spread of residential neighborhoods along the available ground.
For future research, the next best step would be Perry County Clerk land records, old bridge files from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, Sanborn fire insurance maps if coverage exists for the area, Hazard city records, Perry County road orders, aerial photographs, and additional searchable issues of The Hazard Herald. The sources already found are enough to say this much with confidence: Woodland Park was real, locally recognized, and tied deeply to the geography of Hazard.
Sources & Further Reading
U.S. Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
U.S. Geological Survey. “GNIS Downloadable Data.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/u.s.-board-on-geographic-names/download-gnis-data
U.S. Geological Survey. Hazard South Quadrangle, Kentucky, 7.5-Minute Series. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/PDF/KY/KY_Hazard_South_20160425_TM_geo.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Map Collection.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Perry County Biennial Highway Plan Projects Map. Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. https://transportation.ky.gov/Program-Management/Six%20Year%20Plan%20Maps/perry.pdf
Kentucky General Assembly. House Joint Resolution 75, Senate Committee Substitute 1, 2026 Regular Session. Frankfort: Kentucky General Assembly, 2026. https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/26rs/budget/HJ75/SCS1.pdf
HistoricBridges.org. “Old Woodland Park Bridge.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://historicbridges.org/b_h_fipsm.php?bsearch=21193
Bridgehunter.com. “Old Woodland Park Bridge.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://bridgehunter.com/ky/perry/old-woodland-park/
U.S. Geological Survey. “North Fork Kentucky River at Hazard, KY, Monitoring Location 03277500.” National Water Information System. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/03277500/
Boldt, Justin A., Jeremiah G. Lant, and Nicholas E. Kolarik. Flood-Inundation Maps for the North Fork Kentucky River at Hazard, Kentucky. Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5122. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 2018. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/sir20185122
U.S. Geological Survey. “Flood-Inundation Maps for the North Fork Kentucky River at Hazard, Kentucky.” Data Release. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/5be1b754e4b045bfcae4c408
U.S. Geological Survey. Floods of January-February 1957 in Southeastern Kentucky and Adjacent Areas. Water-Supply Paper 1652-A. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1964. https://pubs.usgs.gov/wsp/1652a/report.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey. “Floods of January-February 1957 in Southeastern Kentucky and Adjacent Areas.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/floods-january-february-1957-southeastern-kentucky-and-adjacent-areas
National Weather Service Jackson, Kentucky. “Remembering the Flood of ’57.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.weather.gov/jkl/1957flood
National Weather Service. “Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service: North Fork Kentucky River at Hazard.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=jkl&gage=hazk2
Perry County Clerk. “County Clerk.” Perry County, Kentucky. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://perrycounty.ky.gov/Officials/Pages/County-Clerk.aspx
eCCLIX. “Perry County Clerk Records.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.ecclix.com
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. https://archive.org/details/coalsofnorthfork00hodgrich
Puffett, W. P. Geology of the Hazard South Quadrangle, Kentucky. Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-343. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1964. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Prodesc/proddesc_8202.htm
Crawford, Matthew M., and Michael L. Murphy. Quaternary Geologic Map of the Hazard South 7.5-Minute Quadrangle, Eastern Kentucky. Kentucky Geological Survey, Series XII, 2008. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/CNR29_12.pdf
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Hazard South Quadrangle.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsmap/kgsgeoserver/viewer.asp
The Hazard Herald. “Japanese Bridge Party Given By Mrs. Dillard.” April 28, 1958. https://archive.org/download/kd9r20rr232h/kd9r20rr232h_text.pdf
The Hazard Herald. Classified notice mentioning Woodland Park plumbing and repair service. September 25, 1958. https://archive.org/download/kd9qr4nk3k66/kd9qr4nk3k66_text.pdf
Rennick, Robert M. “Perry County Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection, Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/121/
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813198616/kentucky-place-names/
Kentucky Historical Society. “Research Guide: Kentucky Place Names.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://history.ky.gov
Kleber, John E., ed. The Kentucky Encyclopedia. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992. https://www.kyenc.org
University of Kentucky. “Perry County.” Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.uky.edu/KentuckyAtlas/21235.html
Kentucky River Area Development District. Hazard Perry County Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan. Hazard, KY: Kentucky River Area Development District, 2021. https://kradd.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2021-Hazard-Bike-Ped-Plan.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Bicycle and Pedestrian Plans and Clubs.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://transportation.ky.gov/BikeWalk/Pages/Bicycle-_-Pedestrian-Plans-and-Clubs.aspx
Perry County Fiscal Court. “Perry County, Kentucky.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://perrycounty.ky.gov
Library of Congress. “Chronicling America: The Hazard Herald.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
Kentucky Digital Newspaper Program. “The Hazard Herald.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://kdl.kyvl.org
Author Note: Woodland Park is the kind of Perry County place that has to be rebuilt from maps, bridges, flood records, and small newspaper mentions. I like these neighborhood histories because they show how much Appalachian memory survives outside the big towns and famous landmarks.