Appalachian Community Histories – Vicco, Perry and Knott County: V.I.C.C.O., Montago, and a Community Built Along Carr Fork
Vicco sits where Carr Fork bends through the coal country southeast of Hazard, close enough to the Perry and Knott County line that its story belongs to both counties. The place is small on the map, but the names around it carry a large amount of local history. Stacy Branch, Montgomery Creek, Happy, Defiance, Scuddy, Sassafras, Morey Station, Montago, Montoco, and Vicco all help explain how a railroad stop, a coal company landscape, and a mountain community became tied together in the records. Kentucky Atlas places Vicco on Carr Fork about five miles southeast of Hazard and identifies it as a Perry and Knott County city that began around 1920 as a railroad station for the Virginia Iron Coal and Coke Company.
The name itself is one of the clearest clues. Vicco was not named for an early settler in the usual way. It came from the initials of the Virginia Iron, Coal and Coke Company, often shortened into V.I.C.C.O. The company’s name became a station name, then a post office name, then the name most people used for the surrounding place. Kentucky Atlas notes that the station was known as Vicco for the coal company, while the nearby Montoco station of the Montgomery Creek Coal Company stood near the mouth of Montgomery Creek. The Montoco post office opened in 1921 under the name Montago, then was renamed Vicco in 1923.
That naming history is why Vicco can be hard to research if a person only searches one word. Early records may use Montago, Montoco, Montgomery Creek, Stacy Branch, Carr Fork, or the names of nearby coal operations. The Knott County town-name material gives the Montago post office opening as March 1, 1921, with William McKinley Stacy as postmaster, and says it was renamed Vicco in 1923 for the Virginia Iron Coal and Coke Company, which dominated coal production in the area.
Montago Before Vicco
Before Vicco became the accepted name, the community sat in a web of railroad, creek, mine, and post office names. Montago appears to have grown from the Montgomery Creek connection. Montoco appears in Kentucky Atlas as a station name tied to the Montgomery Creek Coal Company. Those names show that the area was not one single planned town from the beginning. It was a cluster of stops, branches, company properties, postal decisions, and local usage.
This was common in the eastern Kentucky coalfields. A railroad stop could become the public name of a settlement. A coal company could lend its initials to a place. A post office could preserve a name that was slightly different from the railroad’s name. A creek mouth could matter as much as a courthouse record. Vicco’s earliest identity was shaped by all of those forces at once.
The timing matters. Around 1920, eastern Kentucky coal production was still expanding through rail connections and mineral leases. Communities like Vicco were built not only by houses and stores, but also by side tracks, tipples, company offices, post offices, and roads following stream valleys. The Kentucky State Department of Mines annual reports are important here because they preserve the mine names and operators that ordinary county histories often summarize too quickly. The 1925 report includes Montago and Montgomery Creek Coal Company material, while later reports place Vicco, Scuddy, Fusonia, and other nearby coal communities inside the same official mining landscape.
The Company Behind the Name
The Virginia Iron, Coal and Coke Company was larger than Vicco itself. Radford University’s finding aid describes the company as a corporation created in 1899 that operated coal mines, iron mines, furnaces, and related businesses in Southwest Virginia and nearby resource regions. Its archival records include deeds, plats, maps, ledgers, correspondence, and annual reports, which makes that collection one of the best places to look for the deeper company-side story behind Vicco’s name.
For Vicco, the company name tells two stories at once. On one hand, it shows how outside capital and mineral ownership shaped the coalfields. On the other, it shows how quickly a corporate abbreviation could become a local identity. People did not have to know the full company history in order to say they were from Vicco. Over time, the initials stopped sounding like a business name and started sounding like home.
Legal records also point toward the company’s land and mineral importance in Perry County. Cases such as Combs v. Virginia Iron Coal and Coke Co. and Eversole v. Virginia Iron Coal and Coke Co. are useful research paths for understanding mineral rights, title disputes, and land ownership connected to the company. They should be read alongside Perry County Clerk records, Knott County Clerk records, and court records because the history of Vicco is not only a story of coal production. It is also a story of deeds, leases, boundaries, and the rights beneath the ground.
A Coal Town on the County Line
Vicco’s county-line setting is part of what makes it unusual. It is generally associated with Perry County, but official and local sources also place part of it in Knott County. Kentucky Atlas describes Vicco as a Perry and Knott County city, and the Kentucky Department of Insurance later noted that Vicco was positioned across the county line for Knott and Perry counties when addressing tax questions after the city’s dissolution.
That matters for historical research. A person looking for a marriage license, deed, estate record, court case, school matter, tax issue, or mining lease may need to check both counties. Perry County records will usually be the first stop because Hazard was the county seat and Vicco was so closely tied to Perry County’s Carr Fork coalfield. Knott County records should not be skipped, especially for families, land, and boundary questions on the county-line side.
The geography explains much of the town’s development. Carr Fork gave the valley its route. Stacy Branch and Montgomery Creek helped organize local movement. The railroad and coal companies turned those natural routes into work routes. The stores, post office, theaters, homes, and churches followed the same narrow mountain logic.
Mines, Maps, and the Land Itself
Vicco’s history cannot be separated from the geology beneath it. The U.S. Geological Survey published W. P. Puffett’s Geology of the Vicco Quadrangle in 1965, and the National Geologic Map Database identifies it as Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-418 at a 1:24,000 scale.
Those maps matter because coal towns were built where the seams, slopes, creeks, and rail lines made extraction possible. The Kentucky Geological Survey later adapted the Vicco quadrangle into digital spatial data, and KGS county geology references tie the Vicco quadrangle into the broader mapping of Perry County and surrounding eastern Kentucky coal terrain.
Other geological work shows the hazards and limits of that landscape. William F. Outerbridge’s 1982 U.S. Geological Survey open-file report on landslides and related features in Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee included mapping useful for understanding unstable slopes in this part of the Central Appalachian coalfield.
A place like Vicco was not simply placed on the land. It was fitted into the land. The town followed the creek and the road because the mountains gave it few other choices. The same hills that held coal also shaped where people could build, where water would run, where roads could go, and where floods or slides could threaten later generations.
Main Street and the Pastime Theatre
Vicco was more than mines and maps. It also had a Main Street life. One of the strongest surviving symbols of that public life is the Pastime Theatre. Gardens to Gables describes the Pastime as part of Vicco’s coal-town entertainment history and notes that a 1937 photograph showed both the State Theatre and the Pastime in town before World War II. The same source says the State Theatre burned in 1938, leaving the stone Pastime as the lasting theater landmark.
The Pastime appears in trade-periodical records as well. A 1948 Boxoffice item reported that Theatre Owners Corp. had taken over booking and buying for several Don Reda theaters in Kentucky, including the Pastime Theatre in Vicco.
That detail is small, but it opens a larger picture. In a coal town, a theater was not only a building for movies. It was a place where miners, families, children, and young couples encountered the outside world in the middle of a narrow valley. A screen on Main Street could bring westerns, war pictures, newsreels, serials, comedies, and national culture into a community whose daily rhythm was still tied to work shifts and coal loads.
Cinema Treasures lists the Pastime as having opened before 1926 and still operating in 1957, later used as retail space by 2010. It also preserves the State Theatre as a separate Vicco theater, formerly the New Theatre, renamed State Theatre in 1937 and burned in 1938. Those details should be verified against local newspapers and trade journals when possible, but they match the broader picture of Vicco as a coal community with a real commercial and social center.
Newspapers and the Everyday Record
For Vicco, The Hazard Herald is one of the most important primary sources. The Library of Congress identifies The Hazard Herald as a Hazard, Perry County newspaper published from 1911 to 1975, with digitized issues available through Chronicling America.
The value of that newspaper is not only in major headlines. A small town often appears in school notes, church notices, accident reports, mining advertisements, election notices, theater mentions, road discussions, fires, floods, and short community columns. Vicco’s story is likely scattered across hundreds of small references rather than preserved in one complete article.
Searching The Hazard Herald under Vicco alone is not enough. Montago, Montoco, Montgomery Creek, Stacy Branch, Carr Fork, Happy, Defiance, Scuddy, Sassafras, Morey Station, Montgomery Creek Coal Company, and Virginia Iron Coal and Coke Company all belong in the search trail. That is how the record of a small place is usually recovered, one alternate name at a time.
Music, Memory, and the Wider Appalachian Record
Vicco also appears in the cultural archive. The Library of Congress Jean Ritchie and George Pickow collection includes papers, sound recordings, film, video, and photographs documenting folk music, folk songs, folk tales, beliefs, conversations, and family stories connected to Jean Ritchie and George Pickow’s work from the 1940s into the 2000s.
That collection matters because Ritchie’s work preserved a world of eastern Kentucky music and memory that was often ignored by official records. Even when a collection item is not about Vicco alone, it can help place the community inside the region’s living traditions of song, dance, religion, and family storytelling.
The Library of Congress John Cohen collection also includes a 1959 photograph entry for Vicco, along with nearby entries for Leatherwood and Jeff. Cohen’s work is another reminder that the coalfields were documented not only by government reports and company ledgers, but also by photographers, folklorists, musicians, and people trying to preserve Appalachian life as it was being lived.
Fairness, Local Government, and the Later Story
In January 2013, Vicco entered a very different kind of public record when it approved an LGBT Fairness ordinance. The ACLU reported that the ordinance prohibited discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations based on actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity. The measure passed with support from three of the city’s four commissioners and Mayor Johnny Cummings.
The ordinance drew attention because it came from a small Appalachian coal town, not a large city. The ACLU of Kentucky called Vicco the first town in Kentucky’s Appalachians to pass Fairness protections and the first Kentucky city in ten years to approve such a law.
That moment did not erase the older coal-town story. It added another layer to it. Vicco had already been shaped by companies, railroads, county lines, post office names, theaters, churches, and mining records. In 2013, it became part of Kentucky’s civil rights and local-government history as well.
The later municipal record became complicated. In 2022, Kentucky Senate Bill 106 created a one-time administrative process for dissolving defunct cities. WYMT reported during the bill discussion that the issue involved cities collecting taxes without functioning elected officers to spend the revenue.
The Kentucky Department of Insurance later issued Bulletin 2024-01 concerning the termination of local government premium taxes for Vicco. The bulletin stated that Governor Andy Beshear signed SB 106 on March 24, 2022, that the law became KRS 81.062, and that a final order dissolving the City of Vicco was executed on March 1, 2024. The bulletin also stated that, as of March 1, 2024, Vicco was dissolved and ordinances then in effect, including local government premium tax ordinances, were null and void.
The Records Still Holding Vicco
Vicco’s history is not held in one courthouse shelf or one old photograph. It is spread across maps, mine reports, company records, theater pages, newspapers, court cases, geological surveys, clerk records, oral memory, and modern civil rights documents.
That scattered record fits the place. Vicco was a railroad name, a coal-company name, a post office name, a Main Street name, and a county-line name. It was Montago before it was Vicco. It was tied to Montgomery Creek and Stacy Branch before it was known outside the valley. It was a mining town, but also a theater town, a school town, a church town, and later a town that briefly stood in the national conversation over fairness and local law.
To write Vicco’s history is to follow the branches. Carr Fork leads toward Hazard. Montgomery Creek and Stacy Branch lead into the local ground. The company records lead back to mineral ownership and outside capital. The newspapers lead into everyday life. The later government records lead into questions of what happens when a coal town loses the structure that once held its economy together.
Vicco may be small on the map, but it is not small in the record. Its story is one of the clearest examples of how Appalachian communities often survive historically: not in one grand monument, but in names, maps, deeds, mine lists, songs, theaters, ordinances, and the memories of people who still know where the old road turns.
Sources & Further Reading
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “Vicco, Kentucky.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-vicco.html
Library of Congress. “The Hazard Herald, Hazard, Kentucky, 1911 to 1975.” Chronicling America. Accessed May 21, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn85052003/
The Hazard Herald. “The Hazard Herald, Hazard, Kentucky, March 16, 1923.” Library of Congress, Chronicling America. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn85052003/1923-03-16/ed-1/
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines, 1925. Kentucky Geological Survey Digital Archive. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1925.pdf
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines, 1926. Kentucky Geological Survey Digital Archive. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1927.pdf
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines, 1928. Kentucky Geological Survey Digital Archive. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/DanielReportMines1928.pdf
Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet. “Annual Report of the Operation of Mines.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://eec.ky.gov/Natural-Resources/Mining/Mine-Safety/safety-inspections-and-licensing/Pages/annual-reports.aspx
Radford University, McConnell Library. “Virginia Iron, Coal & Coke Company Records, AC 001.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://mozart.radford.edu/archives/findingaids/VirginiaIronCoalCokeCompanyRecords.html
Dickerson, P. D. “The Virginia Iron, Coal, and Coke Company and the Growth of Southern Industry, 1899 to 1929.” Master’s thesis, James Madison University, 2011. https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1198&context=master201019
United States Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
United States Geological Survey. “Download GNIS Data.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-geographic-names/download-gnis-data
United States Census Bureau. “Gazetteer Files.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://www.census.gov/geographies/reference-files/time-series/geo/gazetteer-files.html
Puffett, W. P. Geology of the Vicco Quadrangle, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle 418, 1965. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/gq418
Morris, L. G., J. A. Patton, J. Hesley, and J. R. Lambert. “Spatial Database of the Vicco Quadrangle, Kentucky.” Kentucky Geological Survey, 2005. Listed in Perry County geology bibliography. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/mc164_12.pdf
Outerbridge, William F. Landslides and Related Features, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 82-422, 1982. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/ofr82422
Greb, Stephen F. Geology of the Fire Clay Coal in Part of the Eastern Kentucky Coal Field. Kentucky Geological Survey, 1998. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/mc34_12.pdf
Johnston, J. E., P. T. Stafford, and S. W. Welch. Preliminary Coal Map of the Cornettsville Quadrangle, Perry, Knott, Letcher, Harlan, and Leslie Counties, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Coal Map 22, 1955. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/coal22
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Official Highway Map.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/Pages/Official-Highway-Map.aspx
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Knott County State Primary Road System Map.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/SPRS%20Maps/Knott.pdf
Perry County Clerk. “Records Center.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://perry.countyclerk.us/records-center/
Perry County Clerk. “Online Land Records.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://perry.countyclerk.us/records-center/online-land-records/
Knott County Clerk. “Knott County Clerk.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://www.knottcountyclerk.com/
Kentucky Court of Justice. “Perry County.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://kycourts.gov/Courts/County-Information/Pages/Perry.aspx
Kentucky Court of Justice. “Knott County.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://kycourts.gov/Courts/County-Information/Pages/Knott.aspx
Kentucky Court of Justice. “Request Court Records.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://kycourts.gov/Pages/Request-Court-Records.aspx
Kentucky General Assembly. “22RS Senate Bill 106.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/22rs/sb106.html
Kentucky General Assembly. “Senate Bill 106, 2022 Regular Session: An Act Relating to the Administrative Dissolution of Cities.” https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/recorddocuments/bill/22RS/sb106/bill.pdf
Kentucky Department of Insurance. “Bulletin 2024-01: Termination of Local Government Premium Taxes for Vicco, Kentucky and Remittance of Currently Held Taxes.” April 1, 2024. https://insurance.ky.gov/ppc/Documents/Bulletin2024-01.pdf
Hawke, Zak. “SB 106 Aims to Simplify Process to Dissolve a Defunct City and Cut Local Taxes.” WYMT, February 15, 2022. https://www.wymt.com/2022/02/15/sb-106-aims-simplify-process-dissolve-defunct-city-cut-local-taxes/
Combs v. Virginia Iron, Coal & Coke Co. Accessed through vLex. https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/combs-v-virginia-iron-902334848
Combs’ Administrator v. Virginia Iron, Coal & Coke Co. Accessed through vLex. https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/combs-admr-v-va-891961836
Kentucky Heritage Council. The New Deal Builds: A Historic Context of the New Deal in East Kentucky, 1933 to 1943. https://heritage.ky.gov/Documents/NewDealBuilds.pdf
National Archives. “Records of the Work Projects Administration.” Guide to Federal Records, Record Group 69. Accessed May 21, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/069.html
Works Progress Administration, Historical Records Survey. “Perry County: General History.” County Histories of Kentucky, Morehead State University, 1936. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/59/
Randolph, H. F. “Perry County: General History.” Works Progress Administration Historical Records Survey, Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1053&context=kentucky_county_histories
Works Progress Administration, Historical Records Survey. “Knott County: General History.” County Histories of Kentucky, Morehead State University, 1936. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/51/
Appalachian Heritage Magazine. “Knott County: General History.” County Histories of Kentucky, Morehead State University, 1974. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/52/
Morehead State University. “County Histories of Kentucky.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/
Knott County KYGenWeb. “Knott County Cities and Towns.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://kygenweb.net/knott/area/cities-towns.htm
Perry County KYGenWeb. “Perry County, Kentucky.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://kygenweb.net/perry/
FamilySearch. “Perry County, Kentucky Genealogy.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Perry_County%2C_Kentucky_Genealogy
FamilySearch. “Knott County, Kentucky Genealogy.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Knott_County%2C_Kentucky_Genealogy
Johnson, Eunice Tolbert. History of Perry County, Kentucky. Hazard, KY: Hazard Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, 1953. FamilySearch research guide listing. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Perry_County%2C_Kentucky_Genealogy
Gardens to Gables. “Movie Magic: The Pastime Theater, Vicco, Perry County, Kentucky.” July 27, 2021. https://www.gardenstogables.com/movie-magic-the-pastime-theater-vicco-perry-county-kentucky/
Boxoffice. “TOC Adds 4 Reda Houses.” October 16, 1948. https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/26677402/boxoffice-october161948
Cinema Treasures. “Pastime Theater in Vicco, KY.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/13115
Cinema Treasures. “State Theatre in Vicco, KY.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/63380
Library of Congress. Jean Ritchie and George Pickow Collection. American Folklife Center. Accessed May 21, 2026. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/eadafc.af016008
Library of Congress. Jean Ritchie and George Pickow Collection Finding Aid. American Folklife Center. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/eadafc.af016008.3
Library of Congress. John Cohen Collection, circa 1939 to 2019. American Folklife Center. Accessed May 21, 2026. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/eadafc.af020003
Library of Congress. John Cohen Collection Finding Aid, circa 1939 to 2019. American Folklife Center. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/eadafc.af020003.3
Wolcott, Marion Post, photographer. “Mining Company Town and Homes Near Hazard, Kentucky.” Library of Congress, 1940. https://www.loc.gov/item/19935711
American Civil Liberties Union. “Vicco, Kentucky Approves LGBT Fairness Law.” January 14, 2013. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/vicco-kentucky-approves-lgbt-fairness-law
ACLU of Kentucky. “Vicco, Kentucky Approves LGBT Fairness Law!” January 14, 2013. https://www.aclu-ky.org/news/vicco-kentucky-approves-lgbt-fairness-law/
American Civil Liberties Union. “ACLU of Kentucky Celebrates Victory in Vicco.” January 16, 2013. https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/aclu-kentucky-celebrates-victory-vicco
Barry, Dan. “Sewers, Curfews and a Ban on Gay Bias.” New York Times, January 28, 2013. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/us/vicco-ky-small-town-embraces-gay-rights.html
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Perry, Kentucky.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/states_counties/perry/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Knott, Kentucky.” Accessed May 21, 2026. https://arc.gov/states_counties/knott/
Author Note: Vicco is one of those Appalachian places where the name itself tells part of the history, but not all of it. I wanted to follow the town through its records, from Montago and V.I.C.C.O. to Carr Fork, Main Street, and the county-line story that still makes it worth remembering.