Appalachian Community Histories – Handshoe, Knott County: Upper Quicksand, Post Office Records, and a Name Misread by Outsiders
Handshoe is one of those eastern Kentucky places that is easy to flatten on paper and hard to understand without the map. It was not a city with hard borders. It was an unincorporated Knott County community tied to roads, post office memory, family names, creek valleys, school places, and nearby labels such as Upper Quicksand, Larkslane, Stringtown, Saltlick, and Quicksand Creek.
The official map trail begins with the U.S. Geological Survey. GNIS, the federal geographic names system, is the national standard for domestic place names and records names by state, county, feature class, topographic map, and coordinates. It is useful here because communities like Handshoe often survive in records as “populated places,” not as incorporated towns with legal boundary lines. GNIS also explains why local usage and federal naming can sometimes differ, because a populated place can represent a named community whose boundaries are understood locally rather than legally fixed.
The 1954 USGS Handshoe Quadrangle shows why the place has to be read as a landscape rather than as a dot. The map places Handshoe among ridges, creek branches, roads, schools, and neighboring labels. Upper Quicksand appears in the same map world, along with Saltlick, Ball Branch, Larkslane, and the forked watercourses that shaped settlement and travel. This was a country of narrow valleys and practical names, where a school, a branch, a store, or a post office could become the landmark people used to explain where they were from.
The Handshoe Post Office and the Name
The post office gives Handshoe its clearest public record. Jim Forte’s postal history list places the Handshoe post office in Knott County from 1909 to 1972. The same list shows nearby Larkslane operating from 1948 to 1985, which helps explain why later researchers find overlapping community names in the same general area.
Robert M. Rennick’s Knott County post office research adds an important detail about the name itself. In his account, Handshoe was not named for one single founder so much as for several Handshoe families living in the vicinity. That matters because it keeps the community’s origin closer to kinship and neighborhood memory than to the kind of single-person naming story often repeated for post offices.
Local compiled histories preserve the same sense of overlapping place names. KYGenWeb identifies Handshoe as an unincorporated Knott County community whose post office is closed. The same local source identifies Larkslane as a Handshoe-area hamlet on Kentucky 80 and Jones Fork of Right Beaver Creek, and explains Stringtown as another local label for that section because of the arrangement of houses along the highway.
A Place Marked by Surveyors
Handshoe appears not only in postal records, but in federal surveying. A 1914 U.S. Geological Survey bulletin on spirit leveling in Kentucky described a benchmark at Handshoe opposite the post office, on the north bank of Salt Lick Creek and near the mouth of Bark Camp Branch. That small technical entry is valuable because it anchors the post office landscape to the ground. It shows Handshoe as a working point in a federal survey system, not merely as a family name or a later memory.
The 1950 census records also show the practical geography of roads in the area. National Archives search results for Knott County enumeration descriptions reference roads such as Elmrock-Handshoe Road, while National Archives guidance explains that enumeration district descriptions and maps were used to define the areas census takers covered. For rural places like Handshoe, those road descriptions can be just as useful as town names because they show how government workers understood the county on the ground.
Coal, Geology, and the Quicksand Creek Country
Handshoe’s history also sits inside the larger coal and geology story of eastern Knott County. The Kentucky Geological Survey’s 1912 study of the coals drained by the Quicksand Creeks covered Breathitt, Floyd, and Knott Counties and came from field work done in 1910. That places the Quicksand Creek region in the early twentieth-century resource surveys that helped define eastern Kentucky to outside geologists, coal operators, and state officials.
Later federal and state geological work narrowed the focus even more. Walter Danilchik’s 1977 USGS Geologic Map of the Handshoe Quadrangle was published as Geologic Quadrangle 1372, giving the area a formal scientific map record. The Kentucky Geological Survey’s 1993 coal resource study for the Handshoe 7.5-minute quadrangle placed the quadrangle within the Hazard Coal Reserve District and identified twelve potentially mineable coal beds, seven of which had been commercially developed. Four beds, the Tiptop, Hazard No. 8, Hazard No. 4, and Upper Elkhorn No. 3, had each produced more than one million tons.
That does not mean Handshoe should be remembered only as a coal place. It means the same ridges and creek valleys that held homes, schools, cemeteries, and roads were also being measured as mineral ground. The history of the community sits between those two ways of seeing the land.
Upper Quicksand and Community Memory
Upper Quicksand appears again and again as one of the strongest associated labels. The 1954 map places it within the Handshoe quadrangle, and cemetery records preserve it as a school-centered community memory. KYGenWeb’s transcription for the Upper Quicksand School Cemetery says the cemetery was located by the former Upper Quicksand School. The compiler also warned that notes about the people buried there were subject to error, which is a useful reminder that cemetery transcriptions are leads, not final proof.
Still, those cemetery records are important because they show the community through families rather than only through government offices. Names tied to Handshoe, Fitch, Fitzpatrick, Collins, Messer, Robinson, and others appear in the transcription. A school cemetery beside a former school tells a quieter story than the coal reports and federal maps, but it may be closer to how many residents understood the place.
The War on Poverty Comes to Upper Quicksand
Handshoe and Upper Quicksand entered national view in 1965 through TIME magazine’s article “Appalachia: The Happy Poppies of Handshoe Holler.” The article described Floyd Handshoe and other men in a federal make-work project called the “Happy Pappies,” placed the scene beside Upper Quicksand Creek, and used Handshoe as an example in a broader national story about poverty programs in Appalachia.
That article is useful as a period source, but it should be handled with care. Its language leaned heavily on outsider ideas about mountain people, poverty, religion, literacy, and resistance to change. It told readers about Appalachia through a national magazine voice that often sounded more interested in making a point about “mountaineers” than in letting the community define itself.
The archival trail shows that Upper Quicksand was not just a magazine setting. Berea College Special Collections holds an Appalachian Volunteers file titled “Upper Quicksand, Knott County, 1965” within the VISTA Associates Program community survey results. Berea also holds John Fetterman photograph files that include “Handshoe Hollow (Knott County), Time Magazine, 1965.” Together, those records place Upper Quicksand and Handshoe in the documentary world of the War on Poverty, VISTA, Appalachian Volunteers, journalists, photographers, and local community surveys.
The Handshoe Hollow Problem
The most important correction to the national story came from Garry Handshoe of Alice Lloyd College. In TIME’s November 19, 1965 letters section, he objected that there was “no such place as Handshoe Hollow on Upper Quicksand.” He also challenged the magazine’s tone and pointed to Handshoe family connections with Alice Lloyd College. TIME answered that “Handshoe Hollow” was not a post office address, but said the word “Hollow” was being used in the customary Appalachian sense for a small mountain community in an isolated valley.
That exchange is the key to writing about Handshoe honestly. “Handshoe Hollow” can be used when discussing the TIME article, the Fetterman photograph file, or national media descriptions from 1965. It should not be treated as the official post office name or as proof that local people necessarily used that exact label. The better historical wording is to say that TIME called the place “Handshoe Holler” or “Handshoe Hollow,” while local response challenged that usage and insisted on the difference between a magazine label and the actual community geography.
Why Handshoe Matters
Handshoe matters because it shows how Appalachian places often live in more than one record system at once. A federal map may preserve the ridges and schools. A post office list may preserve the years mail moved under a name. A geological survey may preserve coal beds. A cemetery transcription may preserve families. A national magazine may preserve an outsider snapshot, while a local letter may preserve a correction.
To write Handshoe only from the TIME article would repeat the mistake Garry Handshoe objected to in 1965. To write it only from maps would miss the people. To write it only from coal reports would mistake the land for its mineral value. The fuller story is a Knott County community held together by family names, Quicksand Creek geography, school memory, post office history, and the constant tension between how local people knew their own place and how outsiders described it.
Sources & Further Reading
National Archives. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” Microfilm Publication M1126, Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
National Archives. “Records of the Post Office Department [POD], Record Group 28.” https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/028.html
Rennick, Robert M. “Knott County: Post Offices.” Morehead State University, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1235&context=kentucky_county_histories
Jim Forte Postal History. “Knott County, Kentucky Post Offices.” https://www.postalhistory.com/postoffices.asp?county=Knott&pagenum=2&searchtext=&state=KY&task=display
U.S. Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
U.S. Geological Survey. Handshoe Quadrangle, Kentucky, 7.5 Minute Series. 1954. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/KY_Handshoe_803589_1954_24000_geo.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey. US Topo 7.5-Minute Map for Handshoe, Kentucky. 2016. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/PDF/KY/KY_Handshoe_20160407_TM_geo.pdf
Marshall, R. B. Results of Spirit Leveling in Kentucky, 1898 to 1913, Inclusive. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 554. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1914. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/b554
Marshall, R. B. Results of Spirit Leveling in Kentucky, 1898 to 1913, Inclusive. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 554. PDF. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0554/report.pdf
Danilchik, Walter. Geologic Map of the Handshoe Quadrangle, Eastern Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle 1372. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Geological Survey, 1977. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/geologic-map-handshoe-quadrangle-eastern-kentucky
Weisenfluh, Gerald A., Robert E. Andrews, John K. Hiett, and Richard E. Sergeant. Available Coal Resources of the Handshoe 7.5-Minute Quadrangle, Knott County, Kentucky. Kentucky Geological Survey, Series 11, Information Circular 43. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1993. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/s_11/KGS11IC431993.pdf
Fohs, F. Julius. Coals of the Region Drained by the Quicksand Creeks in Breathitt, Floyd, and Knott Counties. Kentucky Geological Survey, Series 3, Bulletin 18. Frankfort: State Journal Company, 1912. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/S_3/KGS3BN181912.pdf
Fohs, F. Julius. Coals of the Region Drained by the Quicksand Creeks in Breathitt, Floyd, and Knott Counties. Internet Archive PDF. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Coals_of_the_region_drained_by_the_quicksand_creeks_in_Breathitt%2C_Floyd%2C_and_Knott_counties_%28IA_coalsofregiondra00fohsrich%29.pdf
Berea College Special Collections and Archives. “Upper Quicksand, Knott County, 1965.” Appalachian Volunteers Records. https://bereaarchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/archival_objects/6709
Berea College Special Collections and Archives. “Appalachian Volunteers Records, Parts I and II.” https://bereaarchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/resources/4
TIME. “Appalachia: The Happy Poppies of Handshoe Holler.” November 5, 1965. https://time.com/archive/6637840/appalachia-the-happy-poppies-of-handshoe-holler/
TIME. “Letters: Nov. 19, 1965.” November 19, 1965. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0%2C33009%2C834609-3%2C00.html
KYGenWeb. “Knott County, Kentucky Cities & Towns.” https://kygenweb.net/knott/area/cities-towns.htm
KYGenWeb. “Upper Quicksand School Cemetery.” https://kygenweb.net/knott/records/cemeteries/upper_quicksand_cemetery.htm
FamilySearch. “Knott County, Kentucky Genealogy.” https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Knott_County%2C_Kentucky_Genealogy
Library of Congress. “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.” https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/about-this-collection/
Library of Congress. “Kentucky: Local History & Genealogy, Digital Collections.” https://guides.loc.gov/kentucky-local-history-genealogy/digital-collections
Floyd County Public Library. “The Floyd County Times Digital Newspaper Archive.” https://fclib.org/
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Maps.” University of Kentucky. https://www.uky.edu/KGS/pubs/maps.html
Kentucky Geography Network. “Kentucky Geoportal.” https://kygeonet.ky.gov/
Author Note: Handshoe is a good reminder that a place name on a map is only part of the story. I wanted to be careful with “Handshoe Hollow” here because the national article made the phrase famous, but local response made clear that outsiders did not always get the community right.