Appalachian Community Histories – Varilla, Bell County: Cumberland River Roads, Coal Mines, and an Asher Family Name
Varilla sits in the historical record as one of those Bell County places that is easy to pass by and hard to understand unless the old maps, railroad records, mine reports, and post office notes are read together. It was not a county seat, not a large incorporated town, and not a place whose story usually stands alone in broad histories of southeastern Kentucky. Its importance came from its position. Varilla belonged to the coal and railroad corridor east of Pineville, where the Cumberland River, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, the Pineville to Harlan road, and the upper Cumberland coal field all met in the same narrow mountain landscape.
Bell County itself was formed after the Civil War, on February 5, 1867, from parts of Harlan and Knox counties. The county was first called Josh Bell County, after Joshua Fry Bell, before the legislature shortened the name to Bell County on January 31, 1873. That county history matters for Varilla because many of the records tied to the community run through Pineville, Harlan County connections, railroad development, and the coal lands along the Cumberland River.
Robert M. Rennick’s work on Bell County post offices gives one of the clearest compact descriptions of Varilla. Rennick identified Varilla as a coal town and station on the L&N Railroad’s Cumberland Valley Division, about five miles east of Pineville. He also recorded that the town was established by T. J. Asher and named for Asher’s wife, Varilla Howard. The post office operated from 1912 to 1930, giving the community an official paper trail during the years when coal, rail, and road building were reshaping the Cumberland River valley.
T. J. Asher and the Name Varilla
The name Varilla does not appear to have come from a creek, ridge, or older settlement name. The strongest source trail points instead to Thomas Jefferson Asher, one of Bell County’s most important industrial figures. Asher worked in timber before moving heavily into coal, railroad construction, and land development. H. H. Fuson’s History of Bell County, Kentucky, drawing on earlier biographical material, described Asher as a major lumberman at Wasioto and later as president of the Asher Coal Mining Company, with properties at Colmar, Varilla, and Tejay in Bell County, along with properties in Harlan County.
The same county history states that Asher married Varilla Howard on March 3, 1870, and that the village of Varilla in Bell County was named for her. That detail gives the place a personal origin within a much larger industrial story. Tejay came from T. J. Asher’s initials, while Varilla preserved the name of his wife. In both cases, the map of Bell County still carries traces of the Asher family’s role in coal, lumber, and railroad expansion.
Asher’s business career followed the transformation of the region itself. He began with logging and a large sawmill operation at Wasioto, then moved further into coal after the turn of the twentieth century. Fuson wrote that after Asher left the lumber business around 1910, he built a railroad from Wasioto up the Cumberland River to Tejay and opened mines on his property. That line later pushed deeper into the Harlan County coal fields, but places like Varilla show how Bell County served as part of the gateway into that coal country.
Rail, River, and Road
Varilla’s story is partly a railroad story. Rennick’s post office account places the community on the L&N Railroad’s Cumberland Valley Division, and the town’s early growth cannot be separated from that line. Coal towns in this part of Bell County needed rail access to move coal out of the mountains. They also depended on the narrow geography of the Cumberland River corridor, where roads, rails, and settlements often had to share the same limited space between water and cliff.
A valuable oral history from Columbus Mills, preserved by the Knox Historical Museum, helps bring that world closer to the ground. Mills recalled walking from Scalf to Varilla, which he described as about six miles past Pineville, to work on the railroad. His first day was under Seven Sisters Rock, where he helped build a rock roadbed for the railroad from Pineville to Harlan in 1911. The account is a memory recorded much later in life, but it fits the broader record of railroad building through the Pineville to Harlan corridor.
The road corridor remained just as important. University of Louisville digital collections preserve 1928 images of the Pineville to Harlan Road and Rhododendron Highway at Varilla. Those photographs describe the road running beside the Cumberland River and mountain cliffs, with U.S. 119 later following the original roadbed. They show that Varilla was not only a coal and railroad name. It was also part of the route travelers took through the mountains between Pineville and the upper Cumberland country.
The Mine at Varilla
The mining record gives Varilla its clearest industrial identity. The Kentucky State Department of Mines annual report for the year ending December 1920 listed the Varilla Mining Company with E. H. Jewett as president, Walter Brooks as vice president, J. T. Bradley as general manager, and J. R. Fritts as superintendent and mine foreman. The report gave the company’s main office as Cincinnati, its branch office as Pineville, and its mine office as Varilla, Kentucky.
The same report described the Varilla operation as a drift mine on the L&N Railroad. It worked the Harlan seam of coal, with coal listed at forty-eight inches. The mine used mechanical equipment in at least one opening, including Sullivan mining machines, motors made by companies such as Goodman and Jeffrey, and a gravity plane leading down to a wooden tipple. The report listed a capacity of 200 tons per day and noted that power was supplied by Kentucky Utilities Company.
That report also shows why Varilla needs careful source work. The entry places the mine at Varilla, Kentucky, but its county wording appears problematic because Varilla itself is a Bell County place in the geographic and post office records. Rather than treating one line in a mine report as proof that Varilla was in Harlan County, the stronger reading is that the report is documenting a Varilla mine tied to the L&N and the Harlan seam, while the place-name record remains Bell County. This is exactly the kind of small conflict that makes coal camp research depend on several records at once.
Varilla in the Census and Later Coal Records
The post office closed in 1930, but the place did not disappear from the record. A 1940 census enumeration district description for Bell County listed KY ED 7-29 as including part of Colmar and Varilla. That federal record is useful because it places Varilla inside the lived geography of the county after the post office period. It also points researchers toward census schedules where Varilla-area households, occupations, and coal-related work may be traced family by family.
Coal records also continued to connect the Varilla name with property and mining interests later in the twentieth century. In Brownies Creek Collieries, Inc. v. Asher Coal Mining Co., decided by the Kentucky Court of Appeals in 1967, the court discussed Asher Coal Mining Company, leases involving the Hance Ridge property, and an assignment to Varilla Coal Company in 1965. The case belonged to a later coal-property dispute, not the original post office era, but it shows that the Varilla name remained attached to coal operations and lease arrangements long after the early town period.
The Land Beneath the Town
The USGS Geology of the Varilla Quadrangle, Kentucky-Virginia, published in 1963, gives the place a broader geologic frame. The report was written by Kenneth J. Englund, Edwin R. Landis, and Henry L. Smith as USGS Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-190. For a coal town like Varilla, that map is more than background. It helps explain the ridges, seams, drainage, and mineral setting that made the area part of the coal economy in the first place.
The Kentucky Geological Survey also identifies Bell County geologic mapping that adapted or incorporated USGS quadrangle work, including the Varilla quadrangle. These official maps and spatial databases help place Varilla not just as a name on a road or in a post office list, but as a settlement located within a mapped mineral landscape. Coal towns were never random dots on the map. They followed seams, rail lines, land ownership, water, and the rough practical limits of mountain terrain.
What Remains of the Name
Today, Varilla survives most clearly as a place name, a road corridor, a river access point, and a research trail. The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources lists the Cumberland River Varilla Ramp in Bell County, reached by U.S. 25E south of Pineville, U.S. 119 past Varilla, and KY 987. The modern ramp is not the old coal town, but it shows how the name still belongs to the Cumberland River landscape east of Pineville.
That is often how old Appalachian coal communities remain visible. A post office closes. A company changes hands. A mine entry disappears or is reclaimed by forest. The railroad may lose its old passenger meaning. But the name stays in maps, court cases, census districts, oral histories, boat ramps, family memories, and old photographs of roads squeezed between the river and the rock.
Varilla’s history is not the story of a vanished city. It is the story of a small Bell County place shaped by a large industrial system. It began in the age when T. J. Asher and others were building coal and railroad connections through the upper Cumberland region. It carried the name of Varilla Howard Asher into the landscape. It worked through the L&N, the mines, the Pineville to Harlan road, and the Cumberland River corridor. Its paper trail is scattered, but when the records are brought together, Varilla becomes more than a dot on the map. It becomes one of the small places that helps explain how Bell County’s coal country was built.
Sources & Further Reading
Bell County, Kentucky. “About Us.” Official Website of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. https://bellcounty.ky.gov/Pages/about.aspx
Brownies Creek Collieries, Inc. v. Asher Coal Mining Co., 417 S.W.2d 249. Kentucky Court of Appeals, June 30, 1967. https://law.justia.com/cases/kentucky/court-of-appeals/1967/417-s-w-2d-249-1.html
Census Bureau and National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Enumeration District Descriptions, Kentucky, Bell County, ED 7-26 through ED 7-30.” Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1940_Census_Enumeration_District_Descriptions_-_Kentucky_-_Bell_County_-_ED_7-26,_ED_7-27,_ED_7-28,_ED_7-29,_ED_7-30_-_NARA_-_5862280.jpg
Census Bureau and National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Enumeration District Maps, Kentucky, Bell County, ED 7-1 through ED 7-33.” Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1940_Census_Enumeration_District_Maps_-_Kentucky_-_Bell_County_-_ED_7-1_-_ED_7-33_-_NARA_-_5831806_(page_3).jpg
Data.gov. “Digital Geologic-GIS Map of the Varilla Quadrangle, Kentucky and Virginia.” https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/digital-geologic-gis-map-of-the-varilla-quadrangle-kentucky-and-virginia-nps-grd-gri–1963
Englund, Kenneth J., Edwin R. Landis, and Henry L. Smith. Geology of the Varilla Quadrangle, Kentucky-Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-190. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Geological Survey, 1963. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/geology-varilla-quadrangle-kentucky-virginia
FamilySearch. “Bell County, Kentucky Genealogy.” FamilySearch Research Wiki. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Bell_County,_Kentucky_Genealogy
FamilySearch. “United States Census, 1940.” Database with images. https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/collection/2000219
Fuson, H. H. History of Bell County, Kentucky. Vol. 1. KYGenWeb transcription. https://kygenweb.net/bell/area/bell_history1.htm
Fuson, H. H. History of Bell County, Kentucky. Vol. 2. KYGenWeb transcription. https://kygenweb.net/bell/area/bell_history2.htm
Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “Cumberland River, Varilla Ramp.” https://app.fw.ky.gov/fisheries/accesssitedetail.aspx?asid=895
Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “Upper Cumberland River.” https://fw.ky.gov/Fish/Pages/Upper_Cumberland.aspx
Kentucky Geological Survey. Bell County, Kentucky. Geologic Map Information Service publication MC181-12. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/mc181_12.pdf
Kentucky Geological Survey. Middlesboro 100K Geologic Map. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/middlesboro100Kgeo.pdf
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report of the State Department of Mines of Kentucky for the Year Ending December, 1920. Frankfort: State Journal Company, 1921. https://archive.org/stream/annualreport41deptgoog/annualreport41deptgoog_djvu.txt
Knox Historical Museum. “Content Outline of Interview of Columbus Mills at Age 99.” Knox Historical Museum Oral History Project, October 22, 1992. https://knoxhistoricalmuseum.org/exhibits/audio-video-collections/transcriptions-of-interviews-2/columbus-mills-at-age-99-interviewed-by-david-cole.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Records.” https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940
National Archives and Records Administration. “Search Census Records Online and Other Resources.” https://www.archives.gov/research/census/online-resources
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Bell County, Kentucky.” County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1382&context=kentucky_county_histories
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813101798/kentucky-place-names/
Rennick, Robert M. “Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection.” Morehead State University ScholarWorks. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/
Rice, Charles L., and Russell G. Ping. Geologic Map of the Middlesboro North Quadrangle, Bell County, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 87-413. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Geological Survey, 1987. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/ofr87413
Tipton, J. C. The Cumberland Coal Field and Its Creators. Middlesborough, Ky.: Pinnacle Printery, 1905. https://kygenweb.net/bell/books/History_Bell_1/Chapter_XII.htm
United States Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Maps: Preserving the Past.” https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past
United States Geological Survey. “Topographic Maps.” https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/topographic-maps
United States Geological Survey. “USGS 1:24000-Scale Quadrangle for Varilla, KY, 1974.” https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/KY_Varilla_709913_1974_24000_geo.pdf
United States Geological Survey. “US Topo 7.5-Minute Map for Varilla, KY-VA, 2016.” https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/PDF/KY/KY_Varilla_20160401_TM_geo.pdf
University of Louisville Libraries Digital Collections. “Pineville-Harlan Road, Varilla, Kentucky, 1928.” Caufield and Shook Collection. https://digital.library.louisville.edu/concern/images/ulpa_cs_095704
University of Louisville Libraries Digital Collections. “Pineville-Harlan Road, Varilla, Kentucky, 1928.” Caufield and Shook Collection. https://digital.library.louisville.edu/concern/images/ulpa_cs_095705
University of Louisville Libraries Digital Collections. “Rhododendron Highway, Varilla, Kentucky, 1928.” Caufield and Shook Collection. https://digital.library.louisville.edu/concern/images/ulpa_cs_095703
Zipper, Carl E., Mary Beth Adams, and Jeff Skousen. “The Appalachian Coalfield in Historical Context.” In Appalachia’s Coal-Mined Landscapes: Resources and Communities in a New Energy Era. Cham: Springer, 2021. https://research.fs.usda.gov/download/treesearch/62623.pdf
Author Note: Varilla is the kind of Bell County place that can look small on a map but opens into a much larger story once the records are followed. I hope this piece helps readers see how coal towns, railroad stops, family names, and river roads still shape the way eastern Kentucky remembers its past.