Appalachian Community Histories – Watergap, Floyd County: Bull Creek, Roads, and the Community South of Prestonsburg
Watergap sits just south of Prestonsburg, where the land narrows and Bull Creek gives the place its name. In Floyd County, names often began with the shape of the land. A creek, a branch, a ridge, a ford, or a gap could become the word people used for a settlement long before the place appeared on road maps or government records. Watergap was one of those names.
The Kentucky Atlas describes Watergap as a Floyd County community south of Prestonsburg, named for the gap through which Bull Creek passes. That simple explanation carries much of the place’s history. Watergap was not named for a founder, a coal company, or a postmaster. It was named for terrain. The gap came first, then the road, then the post office, then the larger transportation corridor that made Watergap a familiar name to people traveling between Prestonsburg, Lancer, Hazard, and the Big Sandy country.
Today, much of the old Watergap area has been annexed by Prestonsburg, but the name has not disappeared. It remains in road references, cemetery records, maps, old postal lists, family histories, and the memory of people who still know the stretch of road and creek as Watergap.
The Post Office and the Name
A post office often marked the moment when a rural Kentucky place became more than a local description. It gave a community an official identity. Watergap’s post office opened in 1905. The Kentucky Atlas gives its dates as 1905 to 1984, while Floyd County postal lists compiled from National Archives postal records, Robert M. Rennick’s Kentucky place-name work, and Prestonsburg postmaster Donald W. Osborne give the establishment date as March 20, 1905.
That post office record is important because it shows Watergap as a named community during the early twentieth century, when Floyd County was changing quickly. Railroads, coal operations, timber work, schools, churches, gas lines, and improved roads were reshaping the older creek settlements of eastern Kentucky. Watergap was close enough to Prestonsburg to be tied to the county seat, but distinct enough to carry its own postal name for nearly eighty years.
The closing of the post office in 1984 did not end Watergap as a place. It only marked the end of one kind of official recognition. In Appalachia, a post office closing often means the mail route changed before the memory did. People kept the name because the name still told them where they were.
Watergap on the Maps
The U.S. Geological Survey’s Lancer topographic quadrangles are among the best ways to understand Watergap. The 1954, 1978, and 1992 Lancer maps place the community in relation to Bull Creek, Prestonsburg, Lancer, roads, hills, cemeteries, mines, and later development. These maps show Watergap not as an isolated settlement, but as a place shaped by creek valleys and transportation routes.
The older maps matter because they preserve a landscape before the most recent widening, rerouting, and commercial development. On the topographic sheets, Watergap appears in a world of ridges, narrow bottoms, creek crossings, cemeteries, and roads that had to follow the shape of the land. That is one reason the name is so fitting. The place was not just beside Bull Creek. It was formed by the passage Bull Creek made through the hills.
USGS records place Watergap on the Lancer quadrangle at an elevation of about 673 feet. That puts it in the low valley world of Floyd County, where settlement was possible along creek bottoms while the surrounding hills rose sharply above homes, schools, roads, and work sites.
A Small Community in the Prestonsburg Quadrangle
A 1956 U.S. Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper on the geology and groundwater resources of the Prestonsburg quadrangle gives one of the clearest mid-century descriptions of the area around Watergap. The report described the Prestonsburg quadrangle as part of the maturely dissected Allegheny Plateau, with narrow winding ridges and deep, steep-sided valleys. It noted that the only truly flat land was found in valley floors, usually between 600 and 700 feet above sea level.
The same report listed Watergap among the smaller communities of the area, along with East Point, Auxier, Bonanza, Myrtle, and Dotson. It also described the transportation world of the early 1950s. Prestonsburg was the largest town in the area. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway served the Levisa Fork valley, and roads connected the county seat to surrounding places. Hard-surfaced roads served the main routes, while gravel roads still served some smaller communities, including Watergap.
That detail is easy to overlook, but it tells a great deal. In the early 1950s, Watergap was close to Prestonsburg, but it still belonged to the older road pattern of the mountains. It was not yet simply part of a larger highway junction. It was a creek community connected by gravel road, water, wells, and the daily routes of people moving between home, work, school, church, and town.
Water, Gas, and Industry
Watergap’s history is not only a story of roads and names. It is also a story of water. The USGS water reports from 1956 record industrial water use near Watergap by Columbia Fuel Corporation. One report noted that the company’s pressure station near Watergap used Bull Creek water most of the year and relied on wells when the creek did not supply enough water.
USGS Circular 369, Public and Industrial Water Supplies of the Eastern Coal Field Region, Kentucky, gives a more detailed Watergap entry. It identifies Columbia Fuel Corporation at Watergap, with Bull Creek south of Watergap and two standby wells drilled in 1939. One well was 85 feet deep and six inches in diameter. The other was 65 feet deep and six inches in diameter. The report recorded no treatment for the water and listed 315,000 gallons of storage in two reservoirs at the plant.
For 1951, the report recorded 1,700,000 gallons of water distributed for the Watergap Columbia Fuel operation, with an average daily pumpage of 4,700 gallons. The water was used for cooling. Creek water was pumped to an upper reservoir, flowed through the plant, and entered a lower reservoir. Well water was used about two months each year when Bull Creek did not supply enough water.
This is a small detail in a government water report, but it opens a window into Watergap’s industrial landscape. Watergap was part of Floyd County’s gas, coal, and transportation world. Bull Creek was not only scenery. It was a working water source. The hills were not only home ground. They held minerals, gas, and infrastructure.
Roads to Prestonsburg, Hazard, and Dewey Lake
Watergap became especially important because of roads. The modern road system turned an older creek community into a regional junction. Kentucky Transportation Cabinet records list US 23 passing from the Pike County line through Allen, Watergap, and West Prestonsburg to the Johnson County line. The same records list the Hal Rogers Parkway, formerly tied to the KY 80 corridor in this area, running from the Knott County line through Garrett and Alphoretta to the junction with US 23 at Watergap.
KY 302 also begins at the US 23 and KY 80 interchange at Watergap, then runs toward Jenny Wiley State Resort Park, across Dewey Dam, and toward the Johnson County line. That makes Watergap a southern gateway to one of Floyd County’s best-known recreation areas.
Other state road references preserve the name as well. KY 3383 is listed as joining KY 80 southwest of Watergap. KY 3384 runs from US 23 northwest of Watergap by way of Town Branch Road and Graham Street in Prestonsburg to KY 1428. Federal truck-route records also identify KY 80 from KY 15 north of Hazard to US 23 at Watergap, showing how the Watergap name became a marker on a regional freight and travel route.
For many travelers, Watergap is not remembered as a post office or a creek settlement. It is remembered as a junction. It is where roads meet, where the Hazard road comes into Floyd County, where US 23 traffic moves north and south, and where the route toward Dewey Lake begins.
The Coalfield Around Watergap
Watergap was not one of the best-known coal camps of Floyd County, but it belonged to the coalfield landscape. Kentucky Geological Survey mapping of Floyd County mined-out areas places Watergap among communities surrounded by the geologic and mining history of the county. The KGS map, based on the Coal Atlas of Kentucky, shows the broader mined-out landscape of Floyd County, including areas tied to the Upper Elkhorn No. 3 and Fire Clay coal beds.
USGS descriptions of the Prestonsburg quadrangle also placed the area in a resource world of timber, coal, gas, oil, claystone, sandstone, and water. The 1956 report noted that coal seams had been mined in the region, that gas and oil wells had been drilled, and that sandstone had been quarried for road construction. Watergap stood inside that larger economy, even when the records name it more often through roads, wells, water supplies, and nearby industrial facilities than through a single large mine.
That is part of what makes Watergap representative of many Appalachian communities. Not every place became famous as a company town. Some places served as edges, crossings, junctions, support points, road names, school locations, cemetery places, and family communities. Their history is scattered across maps, water reports, cemetery lists, road plans, and local newspapers.
Cemeteries and Family Memory
The older human history of Watergap is most visible in cemeteries. Cemetery records around Watergap and Bull Creek show the families who lived, worked, worshiped, and buried their dead in the area. KYGenWeb and other cemetery indexes identify Watergap-area burial places such as Warix Cemetery on Bull Creek, Rev. Edmond Moore Cemetery at Bull Creek and Watergap, Branham Cemetery at Watergap, and other family cemeteries listed under Watergap or nearby Prestonsburg and Bull Creek.
The Rev. Edmond Moore Cemetery includes burials reaching back into the nineteenth century, including Rev. Edmond Moore, whose death is listed in 1881. Warix Cemetery and other Bull Creek cemeteries preserve family names that connect the area to settlement patterns older than the highway junction. These cemeteries are not just burial grounds. They are records of residence, kinship, religion, and memory.
For local history, cemetery records should be used carefully. Online cemetery listings are often finding aids rather than final proof. The strongest evidence comes from stone photographs, cemetery books, death certificates, land records, church records, and family papers. Still, the cemetery trail matters because it shows that Watergap was not merely a dot on a map. It was a place where people stayed long enough to build families and bury generations.
Annexation and the Prestonsburg Edge
The Kentucky Atlas notes that much of the Watergap area has been annexed by Prestonsburg. That helps explain why Watergap can feel both separate and absorbed. It remains a named community, but parts of it now function as the southern edge of the county seat’s expanded geography.
This kind of change is common in Appalachian county-seat communities. Older named places do not always disappear when city boundaries move outward. Instead, they become layered. A person may say Prestonsburg for mailing, business, or city reference, while still saying Watergap when describing the old community, the road, the creek, or the family place.
Watergap’s story is therefore partly a story of identity under annexation. The official map may change, but the local name keeps working because it carries more than jurisdiction. It carries memory.
Watergap Today
Watergap today is best understood as a layered Floyd County place. It began with a natural gap and a creek. It gained a post office in 1905. It appeared on USGS maps as part of the Lancer quadrangle. It was recorded in federal water studies because of wells, Bull Creek, and Columbia Fuel Corporation’s pressure station. It became tied to highways, truck routes, KY 80, US 23, KY 302, and the road toward Jenny Wiley and Dewey Lake. Its cemeteries preserve older family history. Its name remains even where Prestonsburg has grown around it.
That is the kind of history small communities often leave behind. There may not be one grand event or one single founding document. Instead, the history survives in practical records. A post office date. A creek name. A topographic map. A road listing. A water report. A cemetery transcription. A place name spoken by people who still know where Bull Creek cuts through.
Watergap’s name tells the story plainly. It is the gap where water passed, and where people followed.
Sources & Further Reading
Baker, John Augustus, and William Evans Price. Public and Industrial Water Supplies of the Eastern Coal Field Region, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Circular 369. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/cir369
Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute. “23 CFR Appendix A to Part 658, National Network, Federally Designated Routes.” Accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/23/appendix-A_to_part_658
Elbon, David C. “Watergap, Kentucky.” Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. Accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-watergap.html
FamilySearch. “Floyd County, Kentucky Genealogy.” Accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Floyd_County%2C_Kentucky_Genealogy
Find a Grave. “Cemeteries in Watergap, Kentucky.” Accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery-browse/USA/Kentucky/Floyd-County/Watergap?id=city_53860
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Floyd County Mined-Out Areas.” Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2000. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/download/gwatlas/gwcounty/floyd/FLOYDMO.pdf
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Groundwater Resources of Floyd County, Kentucky.” University of Kentucky. Accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.uky.edu/KGS/water/library/gwatlas/Floyd/Minedout.htm
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Topography, Groundwater Resources of Floyd County, Kentucky.” University of Kentucky. Accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.uky.edu/KGS/water/library/gwatlas/Floyd/Topography.htm
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Georeferenced Map Imagery, Maps and GIS Products at KGS.” University of Kentucky. Accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.uky.edu/KGS/gis/mapimages.htm
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. State Primary Road System: Floyd County. Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, June 17, 2025. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/State%20Primary%20Road%20System%20Lists/Floyd.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. State Primary Road System Map: Floyd County, Kentucky. Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, December 2024. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/SPRS%20Maps/Floyd.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “State Primary Road System.” Accessed June 14, 2026. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/Pages/State-Primary-Road-System.aspx
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet District 12. “Next Phase of Town Branch/Bull Creek Project to Begin in Floyd County.” June 6, 2025. https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/KYTC/bulletins/3e3f2d5
KYGenWeb. “Floyd County, Kentucky Post Offices.” Accessed June 14, 2026. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~kyfchgs/postoffice.html
KYGenWeb. “Civil War Burial Sites, Floyd County, Kentucky.” Accessed June 14, 2026. https://kygenweb.net/floyd/records/military/civil-war/civil-war-burials.html
KYGenWeb. “Floyd County, Kentucky History and Stories.” Accessed June 14, 2026. https://kygenweb.net/floyd/county/index.html
Price, William E., Jr. Geology and Ground-Water Resources of the Prestonsburg Quadrangle, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper 1359. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/wsp1359
Price, William E., Jr. Geology and Ground-Water Resources of the Prestonsburg Quadrangle, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper 1359, PDF. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956. https://pubs.usgs.gov/wsp/1359/report.pdf
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813126319/kentucky-place-names/
Rice, Charles L. Geologic Map of the Prestonsburg Quadrangle, Floyd and Johnson Counties, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-641. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1967. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/geologic-map-prestonsburg-quadrangle-floyd-and-johnson-counties-kentucky
TopoZone. “Watergap Topo Map in Floyd County, Kentucky.” Accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.topozone.com/kentucky/floyd-ky/city/watergap/
U.S. Geological Survey. “Download GNIS Data.” Accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-geographic-names/download-gnis-data
U.S. Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” Accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
U.S. Geological Survey. “GNIS Domestic Names Feature Classes.” Accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-geographic-names/gnis-domestic-names-feature-classes
U.S. Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Maps, Preserving the Past.” Accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past
U.S. Geological Survey. Lancer, Kentucky, 7.5-Minute Topographic Quadrangle. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1954. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/HistoricalTopo/PDF/KY/24000/KY_Lancer_803680_1954_24000_geo.pdf
Author Note: Watergap is one of those Floyd County places where the history survives in practical records more than in a single town chronicle. If readers have photographs, school memories, church records, cemetery notes, or family stories from Watergap and Bull Creek, those pieces can help preserve a fuller account.