Appalachian Community Histories – Beauty, Martin County: Himlerville, Hungarian Miners, and Kentucky’s Cooperative Coal Town
Today, Beauty is a small community along Kentucky Route 40, about two miles west of Warfield in Martin County. Its post office, homes, churches, and roads resemble those of many other communities scattered through the Tug Fork and Big Sandy coal fields.
Yet Beauty once carried another name.
During the 1920s, it was Himlerville, the center of an extraordinary attempt to create a coal company owned by Hungarian miners. The community had electric lights, natural gas, indoor plumbing, a bank, a newspaper, a medical clinic, a theater, a bowling alley, and rows of company houses. Its organizers believed they could build something better than the traditional Appalachian coal camp, where one corporation commonly controlled the mine, houses, stores, utilities, and much of the local government.
For a few remarkable years, Hungarian immigrants invested their savings in Martin County and tried to prove that miners could own the company instead of merely working for it.
The experiment did not last. Financial problems, declining coal sales, receivership, flooding, and a deadly mine explosion brought the original Himlerville era to an end. The town became Beauty, and much of its Hungarian population moved elsewhere.
The surviving story, however, remains one of the most unusual chapters in Kentucky coal history.
Before Beauty Was Beauty
The name Himlerville came from Martin Himler, a Hungarian immigrant, journalist, coal miner, and entrepreneur who arrived in the United States in 1907. Himler had worked as a journalist in Hungary and had written about injustice and the treatment of Hungarian workers and Jews. Threats against him and his family helped convince him to leave Europe and continue his work in America.
Like many immigrants entering the industrial United States, Himler discovered that his education did not protect him from hard labor. He worked in coal mines and moved among Hungarian communities in the Appalachian and northern coal fields. Those experiences gave him firsthand knowledge of mine work, company housing, ethnic discrimination, and the isolation experienced by immigrants who could not easily read English language newspapers.
In 1913, Himler began publishing the Magyar Bányászlap, commonly translated as the Hungarian Miners’ Journal. The weekly newspaper carried news from mining communities across the United States and gave Hungarian workers a publication written in their own language. Surviving issues from 1913 through 1928 are preserved by Morehead State University.
The newspaper became more than a source of information. It connected Hungarian miners living in distant camps and created a network through which Himler could circulate political ideas, solicit investments, advertise businesses, and promote cooperative ownership.
The Magyar Bányászlap would eventually become one of the foundations upon which Himlerville was built.
A Newspaper Becomes a Coal Company
Himler believed Hungarian miners could combine their money and organize a company of their own. Instead of allowing a handful of wealthy investors to control the mine, workers and other Hungarian shareholders would purchase stock and share in the company’s success.
The Himler Coal Company emerged from that vision during the years surrounding the First World War. Its first important operations were connected to the Kermit and Warfield area along the Tug Fork, where the Kentucky and West Virginia coal fields met.
The company operated a mine near Kermit, West Virginia, before shifting its attention across the river into Martin County. Himler later described the West Virginia operation as an extremely poor mine, but the company managed to produce coal and demonstrate that its cooperative organization could function.
By 1921, stockholders had reportedly invested about $2 million. The National Register documentation for the Martin Himler House states that no individual was allowed to own more than one percent of the company. An eleven member board composed of miners participated in decisions about the enterprise and the development of the town. Himler claimed that approximately 2,000 miners held ownership interests.
Contemporary mining publications paid attention.
In September 1921, J. R. Hayworth published “Hungarians Successfully Conduct Cooperative Mine in Kentucky” in Coal Age. The article described the company’s ownership, mine equipment, housing, transportation connections, and community plans. Coal Age reported that company stock was sold to Hungarians and that a stockholder seeking employment was expected to begin the process of becoming an American citizen.
The arrangement reflected both the opportunities and limitations of Himler’s vision. The company promoted Hungarian cooperation and cultural solidarity, but it also tied participation to naturalization and an explicit program of Americanization.
Miners Who Owned Part of the Mine
The Himler Coal Company differed from a conventional coal corporation because its capital came from thousands of comparatively small investors, many of whom were Hungarian miners or members of Hungarian immigrant communities.
These stockholders did not all live in Martin County. Some purchased shares after reading the Magyar Bányászlap or attending meetings in mining towns elsewhere in the United States. Himlerville therefore depended upon a broad immigrant network extending far beyond eastern Kentucky.
Himler presented the enterprise as both economic cooperation and patriotic assimilation. He argued that Hungarian immigrants could become successful American citizens without abandoning their language, community ties, or concern for fellow workers.
The cooperative structure did not mean that every person possessed equal influence over daily operations. Himler remained the company’s public face, chief promoter, newspaper editor, and guiding personality. His newspaper regularly defended the enterprise and encouraged further investment.
The Magyar Bányászlap is consequently one of the richest sources for Himlerville history, but it must also be read carefully. The newspaper was reporting on a company and town whose success strengthened the paper itself. It documented construction, community events, disputes, finances, and local families, but it also sold the dream that Himler was attempting to build.
Independent reports in Coal Age, The Survey, Kentucky mining records, financial publications, local newspapers, and government documents are necessary for understanding both the accomplishments and weaknesses of the experiment.
Building Himlerville
The company moved its principal development into Kentucky, west of Warfield, where houses, businesses, mine buildings, and public facilities began appearing along the narrow valley.
Transportation was essential. Coal had to cross the Tug Fork and connect with the regional railroad system before it could reach distant markets. The company spent more than $200,000 on a bridge at Warfield, according to the National Register nomination. The bridge and rail connections linked the Kentucky operation with Kermit, West Virginia, and the larger Norfolk and Western transportation network.
By the end of 1921, Himlerville already had an amusement hall where residents could watch films twice each week. The hall reportedly contained an electric player piano and a bowling alley. In October, the Hungarian Miners’ Journal transferred its publishing operation to Himlerville, placing the town at the center of Hungarian mining news in the United States.
A power plant began operating the following year. Electricity powered mine equipment and illuminated the tipple, streets, businesses, and houses.
More than 100 houses had been constructed by 1922, with additional homes underway. The community also acquired a company store, bank, hotel, offices, churches, a school, and gathering places.
Martin Himler occupied a large two story house on the hillside overlooking the town. Built in 1922, it included numerous bedrooms, bathrooms, public rooms, a dining room, a dancing room, and a wide front porch supported by columns. Although much larger than the miners’ houses below, it was also used for community gatherings and receiving visitors.
From the hill, Himler could look down upon a town that had grown from the investments of Hungarian miners scattered across America.
A Different Kind of Coal Town
Company towns were common throughout eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, southwestern Virginia, and other Appalachian mining regions. A coal corporation often owned the houses, store, school, utilities, and surrounding land. Rent and store purchases could be deducted from miners’ wages, sometimes leaving families with little cash after each payday.
Himlerville did not entirely escape company control. The coal company still owned much of the town and remained central to nearly every part of community life. Its cooperative ownership, however, allowed Himler to argue that the people were collectively working for themselves.
The physical conditions were unusually advanced for a Kentucky coal town of the early 1920s.
Homes had electricity, natural gas, and indoor plumbing. A federal study of employer housing conducted around the same period found that only a small percentage of company houses in the soft coal districts of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama had indoor toilets. Himlerville’s utilities placed its residents far ahead of many neighboring camps.
The company store included a medical clinic staffed by a doctor, two nurses, and a part time dentist. Some members of the medical staff had studied at the University of Budapest. The clinic has been described as Martin County’s first professional health facility.
Children initially traveled by train to Kermit for school. Himlerville later received its own grade school, completed in 1926. St. Stephen’s Church served many of the community’s predominantly Catholic residents.
A Betterment Committee considered grievances and promoted community improvement. Residents participated in contests for the most attractive yards. Such activities were intended to make Himlerville feel like a permanent community rather than a temporary collection of company houses beside a mine.
The National Register nomination later reported that the United States Coal Commission ranked Himlerville as the second most livable coal town among 713 communities examined. Whether every resident experienced the town in the same favorable way is difficult to determine, but the surviving evidence shows that Himlerville offered services rarely found together in Appalachian mining camps.
Hungarian Life in the Kentucky Mountains
Himlerville was both an Appalachian coal town and a Hungarian immigrant community.
Hungarian could be heard in homes, businesses, church gatherings, and the newspaper office. Families prepared familiar foods, maintained religious customs, organized social events, and read news about Hungary alongside reports from American mining camps.
The Hungarian Miners’ Journal helped residents maintain connections with people living in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Illinois, and other states. Annual Hungarian miners’ almanacs published during the Himlerville years contained photographs, advertisements, essays, business announcements, and information about Hungarian organizations.
At the same time, residents encountered families whose roots in Martin County extended back generations. The meeting of Hungarian immigrants and eastern Kentucky residents created exchanges that were cultural, economic, and personal.
Local people worked in the mine, traded with the town, traveled across the same roads, and sometimes married into immigrant families. Hungarian residents learned the geography and customs of the Big Sandy region while bringing new traditions into the mountains.
Himlerville should therefore not be understood as an isolated European settlement somehow detached from Appalachia. It was an immigrant Appalachian community created within the industrial transformation of the Big Sandy Valley.
Its residents were becoming part of Martin County even as they retained connections to Hungary.
Cooperation During an Age of Conflict
Himlerville developed during one of the most violent periods in Appalachian labor history.
The Matewan conflict erupted nearby in 1920. Fighting continued across the southern West Virginia coal fields, culminating in the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921. Mine guards, company detectives, union organizers, miners, and local officials struggled for control of communities throughout the region.
Immigrant workers were especially vulnerable. Coal companies sometimes divided housing according to ethnicity and used language differences to discourage collective action. Immigrants were also suspected of radicalism during the Red Scare that followed the First World War and the Russian Revolution.
Himler rejected accusations that Hungarian cooperation was communist. In his newspaper, he argued that Hungarians sought independent banks, cooperative businesses, citizenship, and fair treatment within the American system. He presented Himlerville as an alternative to both corporate domination and revolutionary politics.
The town’s cooperative ideal promised that conflict between labor and capital could be reduced because the workers were also investors.
That promise attracted national attention. Tom Wallace described the project in the Louisville Courier-Journal in October 1920. J. R. Hayworth examined it for Coal Age in 1921. Eugene S. Bagger visited the community and published “Himler of Himlerville” in The Survey in April 1922.
Their accounts captured a moment when the town appeared capable of becoming a model for immigrant cooperation and coal community reform.
The Weakness Beneath the Success
The same system that allowed Himlerville to grow also made it vulnerable.
The coal company, newspaper, bank, bridge, housing program, utilities, and community institutions were financially connected. A serious problem in one part of the organization could spread throughout the entire enterprise.
Building a town required enormous capital. Houses, mining machinery, railroad connections, power facilities, bridges, stores, and public buildings had to be completed before the mine could generate enough long term revenue to justify their cost.
The company also depended upon continued coal sales. When demand weakened, the cooperative faced the same market forces as every other mining company.
Kentucky’s coal industry suffered a serious slump during 1925 and 1926. Himlerville had expanded rapidly and committed much of its available money to construction and equipment. Falling purchases left the company with debts it could no longer easily manage.
The Himler Coal Company entered receivership in 1926. The National Register nomination explains that the company had overextended its capital resources before the decline in coal demand. The town’s financial failure was therefore already underway before the disaster most commonly associated with its end.
Himler’s own newspaper attempted to explain the worsening crisis to its readers and investors. Financial reports, banking records, Hungarian American newspapers, and independent publications reveal criticism and disagreement that were not always as visible in the company’s promotional accounts.
The dream had not collapsed because cooperation itself was impossible. It had been undermined by debt, overexpansion, weak coal markets, management difficulties, and the enormous cost of constructing an industrial community in a narrow Appalachian valley.
The Flood of 1928
On June 28, 1928, a devastating flood struck Himlerville.
Water swept through the valley and carried away numerous houses. Tributaries feeding the Tug Fork rose across the region, damaging property and destroying infrastructure that the struggling company could not afford to replace.
Martin Himler had left for Columbus, Ohio, several weeks earlier, reportedly seeking medical treatment and attempting to devote more attention to his newspaper. The flood eliminated much of the remaining hope that the coal company or town could recover.
The disaster later became the simplest explanation for Himlerville’s fall. In local memory, the flood often appeared as the single event that destroyed the cooperative.
The surviving records show a more complicated sequence. Receivership and financial decline came first. The flood delivered a final physical blow to a community whose economic foundation had already cracked.
The Himler Mine Explosion
The community suffered another tragedy before the end of 1928.
Kentucky’s State Department of Mines reported that an explosion occurred at the Himler Coal Company mine on November 27. The company president, general manager, and superintendent were conducting a preliminary inspection when a gas explosion killed all three.
The official report placed the Himler mine among the active Martin County operations for the year and recorded 165 men employed in and around it. It also listed three fatalities for the company. The deaths of three senior officials revealed that mining continued at Himlerville even after receivership and the flood, although the original cooperative enterprise was nearing its end.
The explosion provided a grim conclusion to a year already marked by financial collapse and natural disaster.
From Himlerville to Beauty
The Himlerville post office had opened in 1921. In 1929, its name was changed to Beauty.
The new name marked the end of the community’s formal identification with Martin Himler and his coal company. Some Hungarian families remained, but many left Martin County in search of work elsewhere.
The Great Depression further reduced opportunity throughout the coal fields. Houses disappeared, businesses closed, and buildings were altered or abandoned. The settlement gradually became a smaller eastern Kentucky community whose short period as a nationally discussed cooperative was easy to overlook.
Government records, censuses, deeds, mining reports, church registers, cemetery records, and newspapers allow historians to trace the transition. The 1930 census is especially valuable because it captures residents near the end of the original Himlerville period. Later censuses show who remained and how occupations, property ownership, and household composition changed.
The post office continued under the name Beauty, preserving a community at the same location even as the earlier name receded from maps and ordinary use.
Martin Himler After Kentucky
The end of Himlerville was not the end of Martin Himler’s remarkable life.
He continued working in Hungarian American journalism and later served with the Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War. As head of an OSS section concerned with Hungary, Himler helped locate and interrogate suspected Hungarian Nazi war criminals.
The University of Tennessee Press reports that he participated in the arrest of more than 300 suspects and personally interrogated about 40. His work carried him from the coal fields of Appalachia into the effort to document crimes committed in wartime Europe.
His autobiographical manuscript was eventually donated to the Martin County Historical and Genealogical Society. Edited by Cathy Cassady Corbin and published as The Making of an American, it records Himler’s memories of Hungary, immigration, mining, Himlerville, journalism, and wartime service.
Like the Hungarian Miners’ Journal, Himler’s autobiography reflects his own understanding of events and should be compared with independent records. It nevertheless preserves the voice of the person who imagined that a community of immigrant miners could build and own a Kentucky coal town.
The House Above Beauty
For decades, the most recognizable remnant of Himlerville was the Martin Himler House.
The large weatherboard residence stood on a narrow hillside above Beauty. Its gambrel roof, broad porch, columns, numerous rooms, and commanding location distinguished it from the more modest houses below.
The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991 because of its association with Himler and the cooperative town. The nomination identified social history as its principal area of significance and recognized the years from 1922 through 1928 as its most important period.
Time and neglect eventually left the structure dangerously unstable. In 2022, after portions had collapsed, preservation workers disassembled the house. Original materials were documented and saved with the goal of reconstructing it.
The Martin County Historical and Genealogical Society and its partners continue seeking support for the project. As of 2026, local preservation leaders were still working toward rebuilding the house and establishing a historical destination devoted to Hungarian immigration, coal mining, Himler’s cooperative, and his later wartime service.
The house may no longer stand intact above Beauty, but its carefully preserved pieces represent the possibility that Himlerville’s history can be returned to the landscape.
Why Beauty’s History Matters
Beauty’s history challenges the familiar image of the Appalachian coal town.
Himlerville was not simply a camp constructed by an outside corporation. It was financed by Hungarian immigrants, promoted through an immigrant newspaper, and organized around the belief that miners could become owners.
The experiment never completely escaped the problems of company control. Martin Himler remained its dominant voice, and the enterprise depended heavily upon his newspaper, leadership, and ability to attract investment. The company also operated within a volatile industry where even idealistic owners had to sell coal, repay loans, maintain machinery, and survive changes in national demand.
Yet the community accomplished something significant.
Hungarian miners built homes with electricity and indoor plumbing. They established a clinic, bank, newspaper, church, school, entertainment hall, and other institutions in a remote Martin County valley. They created a town that contemporary observers considered one of the most advanced mining communities in the country.
Its failure does not erase that achievement.
Beauty remains a place where Appalachian history, Hungarian immigration, coal mining, cooperative ownership, labor reform, and Americanization intersect. Its history belongs not only to Martin County but also to the broader story of immigrants who entered America’s mines and attempted to change the economic system they found there.
The name Himlerville disappeared from the post office in 1929, but it survives in newspapers, mining reports, census schedules, photographs, family memories, cemetery stones, and the preserved pieces of Martin Himler’s house.
Beneath the modern name Beauty lies the memory of a town built by miners who briefly owned a share of the mountain beneath their feet.
Sources & Further Reading
Bagger, Eugene S. “Himler of Himlerville.” The Survey 48, no. 5 (April 29, 1922): 146–150, 187. https://archive.org/details/surveycharityorg48survrich
Cantrell, Doug. “Himlerville: Hungarian Cooperative Mining in Kentucky.” Filson Club History Quarterly 66, no. 4 (October 1992): 513–542. https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/12094775/himlerville-hungarian-cooperative-mining-in-kentucky-the-filson-
Crowe-Carraco, Carol. The Big Sandy. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1979. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_united_states_history/31/
Eller, Ronald D. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880–1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982. https://utpress.org/9780870493416/miners-millhands-and-mountaineers/
Hayworth, J. R. “Hungarians Successfully Conduct Co-operative Mine in Kentucky, Having Two Million Dollars Invested.” Coal Age 20, no. 11 (September 15, 1921): 412–414. https://archive.org/details/21CoalAgeHimlerville
Himler, Martin. The Making of an American: The Autobiography of a Hungarian Immigrant, Appalachian Entrepreneur, and OSS Officer. Edited by Cathy Cassady Corbin. Introduction by Doug Cantrell. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2018. https://utpress.org/9781621904519/the-making-of-an-american/
Kentucky Department of Mines. Annual Report for 1924. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Department of Mines, 1925. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1924.pdf
Kentucky Department of Mines. Annual Report for 1925. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Department of Mines, 1926. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1925.pdf
Kentucky Department of Mines. Annual Report for 1927. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Department of Mines, 1928. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1927.pdf
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report for 1928. Frankfort, KY: State Department of Mines, 1929. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/DanielReportMines1928.pdf
Kentucky Division of Mine Safety. “Annual Reports.” Kentucky Mine Mapping Information System. https://www.minemaps.ky.gov/Maps/AnnualReports
Kentucky Educational Television. “Himlerville, Kentucky.” Kentucky Life. February 8, 2015. https://ket.org/himlerville-kentucky
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Phase I Archaeological Survey along Kentucky Route 40 in Martin County, Kentucky. Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, 2015. https://transportation.ky.gov/Archaeology/Reports/Phase%20I%20Archaeological%20survey%20along%20KY%2040%20in%20Martin%20County%2C%20Kentucky.pdf
Kürti, László. “Himlerville.” Regio 25, no. 2 (2017): 146–185. https://real.mtak.hu/57405/1/Kurti_Himlerville_2017_Regio_u.pdf
Marshall University Archives and Special Collections. “George Gunnoe Papers, 1918–1943.” Marshall Digital Scholar. https://mds.marshall.edu/gunnoe_george_papers/
Marshall University Archives and Special Collections. “[Himlerville, Ky.?], ca. 1919.” George Gunnoe Papers, 1918–1943. https://mds.marshall.edu/gunnoe_george_papers/11/
Marshall University Archives and Special Collections. “[Himlerville, Ky.?], ca. 1920.” George Gunnoe Papers, 1918–1943. https://mds.marshall.edu/gunnoe_george_papers/5/
Morehead State University. “Magyar Bányászlap Archive, 1913–1928.” Morehead State University ScholarWorks. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/magyar_banyaszlap/
National Archives and Records Administration. “1920 Census Records.” https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1920
National Archives and Records Administration. “1930 Census Records.” https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1930
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Records.” https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940
National Archives and Records Administration. “1950 Census Records.” https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1950
Perry, L. Martin. “Martin Himler House.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Frankfort: Kentucky Heritage Council, 1991. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/2abc0053-c111-412f-89d6-9f923c74a3c1
Slepyan, Anya Petrone. “How We Owned a Mine, or a Brief History of Kentucky’s Coal Mining Cooperative.” Kentucky Lantern, July 11, 2024. https://kentuckylantern.com/2024/07/11/how-we-owned-a-mine-or-a-brief-history-of-kentuckys-coal-mining-cooperative/
Torok, George D. A Guide to the Historic Coal Towns of the Big Sandy River Valley. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004. https://utpress.org/9781572332829/guide-to-the-historic-coal-towns-of-the-big-sandy-river-valley/
United States Geological Survey. “TopoView: Historical Topographic Maps.” https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
West Virginia University. “Resources.” Appalachian Hungarian Heritage Project. https://appalachianhungarians.wvu.edu/resources
Wolfe, Margaret Ripley. “The Towns of King Coal.” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 97, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 189–201. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23384093
Author Note: Beauty’s history reminds us that the coalfields were shaped not only by large corporations, but also by immigrants seeking alternatives of their own. I hope this article preserves the memory of Himlerville and encourages readers to explore the newspapers, photographs, mining reports, and family records that still tell its story.