Appalachian Community Histories – Squib, Pulaski County: Coal Mines, Lacey Fork, and the Post Office That Lasted 52 Years
In the eastern hills of Pulaski County, Kentucky, near Lacey Fork and the communities of Sandy Gap, Conrard, and Ano, lies the small settlement of Squib. Although it never developed into a large town, Squib became part of the county’s early twentieth-century coal industry and maintained its own post office for more than fifty years. Its history is preserved through federal postal records, local historical research, old maps, and the recollections of families who lived in the surrounding countryside.
Squib’s documented postal history began in 1923, during a period when coal mining was expanding into several parts of eastern Pulaski County. Within three years, the community had become the starting point of a federally contracted mail route connecting several rural settlements with Shopville. The original route schedules, published by the United States Post Office Department in August 1926, provide an unusually detailed record of how this small Appalachian community communicated with the outside world.
Its unusual name also attracted the attention of Kentucky place-name historian Robert M. Rennick, who preserved a local account of how Squib received its identity. Together with the surviving evidence of coal mining and the histories of local families, these records offer a picture of a community whose significance extended beyond its modest population.
The Geography of Squib and Lacey Fork
Squib developed in the countryside of eastern Pulaski County, an area characterized by wooded ridges, narrow valleys, streams, and scattered agricultural settlements. Lacey Fork was an important geographical reference for the community, while the surrounding network of roads connected residents with Sandy Gap, Acorn, Ano, Conrard, and the larger commercial centers farther west.
The Kentucky Geological Survey’s county geological map identifies Squib among these neighboring communities, illustrating its position in a section of Pulaski County where the landscape changes from the agricultural country surrounding Somerset into the more rugged terrain toward Rockcastle and Laurel counties.
This geography helps explain the importance of small post offices and rural transportation routes. Families living in the hills and valleys could be separated from neighboring settlements by relatively short distances that nevertheless required considerable travel along winding roads. A local postal facility provided a recognizable center for receiving correspondence, newspapers, business communications, and government notices.
Squib was part of a broader network of small communities rather than an isolated settlement. To the northwest, Conrard had maintained a post office since 1899, while Skip and Ano served families living farther south toward Big Clifty Creek and its tributaries. These communities developed their own identities, but their histories were connected by the same roads, waterways, and postal arrangements.
How Did Squib Get Its Name?
One of the most distinctive features of Squib is its unusual name, which does not immediately suggest a geographical landmark, prominent family, or local industry.
Robert M. Rennick addressed its origin in the second installment of his three-part study, The Post Offices of Pulaski County, Kentucky, published in La Posta in 2007. Rennick preserved an account suggesting that the name came from a person known as Squib who appeared while a name for the new post office was being considered. According to the account, someone suggested using his name, which was subsequently submitted and accepted by postal authorities.
The story provides an explanation for a name that might otherwise appear entirely arbitrary. However, it is important to distinguish the tradition recorded by Rennick from the surviving federal documentation. The account has not been independently confirmed through the original postal naming application, and the available published evidence does not establish the identity of the person known as Squib.
Nevertheless, the story reflects the informal circumstances under which many Appalachian communities acquired their names. Postal officials required distinctive names for newly established offices, and local applicants frequently drew inspiration from residents, families, businesses, or circumstances surrounding the application.
In Squib’s case, the name survived for more than half a century as an official postal designation and remained associated with the surrounding countryside after the office eventually closed.
Coal Mining in Eastern Pulaski County
Although Squib’s surviving history is closely associated with its post office, the community also participated in the expansion of coal mining across eastern Pulaski County during the early twentieth century.
The Pulaski County Fact Book II, in its chapter on industrial development, specifically identifies Squib among several eastern Pulaski County communities where coal mines opened during this period. The account places these operations alongside mining activity around Acorn and Line Creek, providing direct evidence that Squib belonged to a developing local coal industry.
Coal mining was not new to Pulaski County. During the nineteenth century, operations had already developed around Hail, where the Slip-up Mine produced coal that could be transported along the Cumberland River. Some coal was moved downstream in locally constructed barges, connecting the county’s mineral resources with consumers beyond the immediate mining districts.
The opening of additional mines in eastern Pulaski County during the early twentieth century represented a continuation of this industry. Unlike the enormous mining developments that transformed portions of Harlan, Bell, and Pike counties, coal production in Pulaski County remained comparatively limited in its influence on the county’s overall economy.
The local history notes that agriculture and other commercial activities remained important, even as coal provided opportunities for additional employment.
The surviving published account does not identify the individual operators of Squib’s early mines or establish their production figures, workforce sizes, or exact operating dates. Those details require examination of contemporary Kentucky mining reports, historical mine maps, property records, and local newspaper coverage.
However, the direct identification of mining activity around Squib establishes an important part of the community’s economic history. It also connects the settlement with the broader transformation of Appalachian rural life as families combined traditional agricultural work with employment in extractive industries.
The Establishment of Squib’s Post Office in 1923
Squib’s post office opened in 1923, according to the historical postal dataset compiled from Richard W. Helbock’s research and subsequently developed by historian Cameron Blevins. The dataset records the office’s years of operation as 1923 through 1975, placing it among the numerous small Kentucky post offices established or maintained during the first half of the twentieth century.
The creation of the office gave Squib a recognized place in the federal postal network at a time when dependable communication remained especially important to rural households. For residents whose homes were scattered along Lacey Fork and neighboring roads, a nearby post office reduced their dependence on longer journeys to other communities.
The establishment of Squib’s office also reflected the continued development of eastern Pulaski County. By the early 1920s, several neighboring communities already had established postal facilities, making the area part of an interconnected system of rural mail distribution.
The original appointment records preserved by the National Archives offer a means of identifying Squib’s first postmaster and reconstructing subsequent changes in the office’s administration. The relevant records are contained in Microfilm Publication M841, roll 49, which covers Pulaski County. The surviving site-location reports in Microfilm Publication M1126, roll 231, may also help establish the original location of the office and any later relocations. These particular Squib records have not yet been independently examined.
The 1926 Mail Route from Squib to Shopville
One of the most informative surviving primary sources concerning Squib is the August 27, 1926, issue of The Postal Bulletin, an official publication of the United States Post Office Department.
The bulletin announced the establishment of mail route 30054, connecting Squib with Shopville through Conrard, Public, and Dahl. The route measured 12.4 miles each way and operated six days a week, with the contract running from September 16, 1926, through June 30, 1928.
Riley L. McCallister of Public received the contract at an annual payment of $1,040. The new arrangement replaced the earlier Squib-to-Conrard route, which was discontinued effective September 15, 1926.
The original bulletin also preserved the route’s operating schedule. Mail was scheduled to leave Squib at 6 a.m. and arrive in Shopville by 10:30 a.m., departing Shopville again at 11 a.m. and returning to Squib by 3:30 p.m. The schedule applied every day except Sunday and became effective on September 16, 1926.
These details provide a rare opportunity to reconstruct part of Squib’s daily life with considerable precision. The morning departure and afternoon return established a regular connection between several rural communities, allowing mail to move along a route that linked isolated households with the wider postal system.
The new route also formed part of a broader reorganization of postal transportation in eastern Pulaski County. The same bulletin established route 30053 between Somerset and Shopville through Grundy, while a separate schedule connected Skip with Shopville. Together, these services brought several of the county’s small settlements into a coordinated network of regular mail transportation.
For residents of Squib, this network represented an essential connection to the surrounding region. The original federal document establishes the route, its contractor, and its schedule, although it does not identify every household served or describe the conditions encountered during individual trips.
Squib and Its Neighboring Communities
The history of Squib is closely connected to the smaller settlements that developed around Lacey Fork, Line Creek, and Big Clifty Creek.
Robert M. Rennick’s research placed Skip approximately two miles south of Squib. Its post office had originally been established by Amos Chaney on October 19, 1891, and was relocated in August 1923 to a site nearer Big Clifty Creek. The office remained in operation until 1934.
Farther south, the Ano post office was established on September 15, 1906, with William M. Vanhook serving as its first postmaster. Rennick recorded that the office eventually operated from the store of Harvey and Laura Whitaker, approximately four and a half miles south of Squib, before closing in 1964.
These neighboring establishments demonstrate how rural communities developed distinct identities while remaining connected through transportation, commerce, and family relationships. Their post offices were not necessarily associated with large concentrations of buildings or formally organized towns. Instead, they served recognizable localities whose residents depended on a network of roads and neighboring settlements.
Squib’s position among these communities also helps explain why the 1926 postal route was significant. Rather than functioning as an isolated endpoint, the community participated in a transportation system that connected several established settlements and provided a dependable means of exchanging correspondence.
The Burdine Family and Life in Squib
Although postal records preserve Squib’s official history, family records offer a more personal perspective on the community.
The Burdine family is among the families whose connection to Squib can be documented through surviving biographical accounts. Carlos Burdine, commonly known as Dude, was born in the Squib community on July 20, 1928, to Oma and Mary Burdine.
According to his obituary, published in the Commonwealth Journal in August 2014, he was one of eleven children and later became a lifelong resident of the nearby Sandy Gap community. He spent years working in coal mining and rock quarrying and was remembered for his mechanical abilities and his involvement with his family and local community.
His life provides a connection between Squib’s early twentieth-century families and the region’s continuing mining economy. However, the obituary does not identify his individual mining employers or establish that his coal-mining work took place at Squib itself.
Another member of the Burdine family, Charles O. Burdine, known as Kip, was born at home in Squib on September 15, 1942, to James C. Burdine and Olga Lea Decker. His obituary describes a childhood centered on his brothers and sisters and the outdoor activities he enjoyed while growing up.
Kip attended Shopville High School before pursuing higher education at the University of Kentucky, Sue Bennett College, and Eastern Kentucky University. He eventually established a career in accounting and banking, working in several Kentucky communities before returning to his family farm in the Valley Oak area.
His experiences illustrate how families originating in small Appalachian settlements maintained connections to the broader region through education, employment, marriage, and family relationships. The fact that his obituary continued to identify Squib as his birthplace decades after he left the community also demonstrates how enduring these local identities could be.
The Closing of the Squib Post Office in 1975
Squib’s post office continued serving the Lacey Fork vicinity until 1975, according to Rennick’s published research and the historical postal dataset compiled by Helbock and Blevins. Its closure ended approximately fifty-two years of postal history under the Squib name.
By the middle of the twentieth century, substantial changes in transportation and communication were affecting rural communities throughout Kentucky. Improvements to highways and local roads, increasing automobile ownership, and the development of more extensive rural delivery networks altered the practical importance of small independently operated post offices.
These developments provide context for the disappearance of numerous rural offices, although the precise circumstances surrounding Squib’s closure have not been established through a surviving discontinuation order or contemporary newspaper account.
The office was not the only one in the surrounding countryside to close during this period. Conrard, which had maintained its own postal identity since 1899, closed in May 1975, while Ano and Skip had already lost their offices in earlier decades.
The closure of these facilities did not necessarily mean that their communities disappeared. Families continued living in the surrounding countryside, and familiar place names survived through roads, maps, property descriptions, and local recollections.
Squib remained one of those names, preserving the identity of a small Pulaski County settlement long after its independent postal service had ended.
Remembering Squib, Kentucky
The surviving history of Squib reveals a community shaped by geography, industry, transportation, and the families who called the surrounding countryside home. Its unusual name was preserved by local tradition, its coal-mining history was recorded in county historical research, and its postal operations appeared in original federal publications.
The 1926 postal bulletin is particularly important because it provides direct contemporary evidence of Squib’s connections to neighboring settlements. The names of the contractor, the communities along the route, the distances involved, and the daily schedule preserve details of rural life that might otherwise have disappeared from the historical record.
Family histories add another dimension to this account. The experiences of residents such as Carlos and Charles Burdine demonstrate that Squib was more than a name in a postal register or a small point on a map. It was a place where families raised children, found employment, attended schools, and maintained relationships that extended across Pulaski County and beyond.
Much remains to be recovered about the community, particularly the identities of its first postmasters, the operators of its early coal mines, and the exact circumstances surrounding the establishment and eventual closure of its postal facility. Contemporary newspapers, original federal records, and surviving family collections may help answer these questions.
Squib’s history nevertheless illustrates why small Appalachian communities deserve attention alongside the region’s larger towns and industrial centers. Their stories are often preserved in scattered documents rather than comprehensive local histories, but those records reveal the everyday institutions, industries, and personal relationships that shaped rural life across eastern Kentucky.
Sources & Further Reading
United States Post Office Department. The Postal Bulletin. Vol. 47, no. 14167. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, August 27, 1926, 2. https://www.mmpe.net/blueridge/postoffice/dbpb-Vol47_Issue14167_19260827.pdf.
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Pulaski County, Kentucky, Part II.” La Posta: A Journal of American Postal History 38, no. 4 (2007): 58–67. https://www.lapostapub.com/Backissues/LP38-4.pdf.
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Pulaski County, Kentucky, Part I.” La Posta: A Journal of American Postal History 38, no. 3 (2007). https://www.lapostapub.com/Backissues/LP38-3.pdf.
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Pulaski County, Kentucky, Part III.” La Posta: A Journal of American Postal History 38, no. 5 (2007). https://www.lapostapub.com/Backissues/LP38-5.pdf.
Pulaski County Fact Book II. “Chapter 4: Industrial Development.” Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/fact_book/four.htm.
Blevins, Cameron, and Richard W. Helbock. US Post Offices. Historical dataset. 2021. https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/.
Blevins, Cameron. “US Post Offices Data Biography.” March 31, 2021. https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/data-biography/.
Rennick, Robert M. “Pulaski County: Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky, no. 388. Morehead State University, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/388/.
Rennick, Robert M. “Pulaski County: Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection, no. 123. Morehead State University, 2016. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/123/.
Works Progress Administration and Robert M. Rennick. “Pulaski County: Post Offices & Place Names.” County Histories of Kentucky, no. 284. Morehead State University. Cataloged as 1939. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/284/.
National Archives and Records Administration. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971. Record Group 28, Microfilm Publication M841, roll 49. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html.
National Archives and Records Administration. Post Office Department Records of Site Locations, 1837–1950. Microfilm Publication M1126, roll 231, Kentucky. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html.
Kentucky Division of Mine Safety. Annual Reports, 1900–1920. Frankfort, KY: Commonwealth of Kentucky. Digitized historical mining reports. https://minemaps.ky.gov/Maps/AnnualReports.
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report, 1924. Frankfort, KY: Commonwealth of Kentucky, 1924. Kentucky Geological Survey. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1924.pdf.
Kentucky Geological Survey. Pulaski County Geology. Lexington: University of Kentucky. County geological map. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/download/gwatlas/gwcounty/pulaski/PULASKIGEO.pdf.
United States Geological Survey. Historical Topographic Map Collection. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/.
United States Geological Survey and Robert M. Rennick. Billows, Kentucky. 7.5-minute topographic quadrangle, 1952. Robert M. Rennick Topographical Maps Collection, Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_maps_all/60/.
Morehead State University. Robert M. Rennick Topographical Maps Collection. Camden-Carroll Library, Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_maps_all/.
Pulaski County Public Library. Digital Archives of the Pulaski County Public Library. Historical newspapers, census records, court records, deeds, and tax lists. Somerset, KY. https://pulaskilibrary.advantage-preservation.com/.
“Carlos ‘Dude’ Burdine.” Commonwealth Journal, August 30, 2014. https://obituaries.somerset-kentucky.com/obituary/carlos-burdine-764595011.
Pulaski Funeral Home. “Charles O. ‘Kip’ Burdine.” September 2018. https://www.pulaskifuneralhome.com/obituaries/charles-burdine.
Author Note: Squib’s history reminds us that even the smallest Appalachian communities have stories worth preserving through the records and memories they leave behind. I hope this article helps readers reconnect with the families, coal mines, and rural postal routes that once defined this corner of Pulaski County.