Appalachian Community Histories – Thelma, Johnson County: Buffalo Station, the C&O Railroad, and the Perkins Center
A few miles east of Paintsville, the Levisa Fork bends through a narrow section of Johnson County where railroad tracks, Kentucky Route 1107, homes, and public institutions occupy the limited ground between river and hillside. Today the place is known as Thelma, but the name on the post office tells only part of the story.
Before there was a Thelma post office, there was a railroad station called Buffalo. Later the railroad used the name Buskirk. A neighborhood called Concord appears in the story as well. By the middle of the twentieth century, Thelma had a school and an important place in the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad corridor. In the 1960s Kentucky Power built a major electrical station there. In 1973 the state opened what became one of eastern Kentucky’s most important vocational rehabilitation facilities.
The result is a community whose history can be read through the institutions that passed through it. Railroad records, postal history, maps, newspapers, electrical company publications, and state records all preserve pieces of Thelma’s development. The documentary record is unusually rich for a small Johnson County community, although it also leaves one significant disagreement over exactly when the name Buskirk entered the story.
Before Thelma
Thelma did not begin in 1905 simply because a post office opened that year. Families had occupied the Levisa Fork valley long before the federal government placed the name on its postal maps.
Nineteenth-century maps help show the landscape before the modern community developed. An approximately 1880 map of Morgan and Johnson counties prepared by geologist A. R. Crandall records roads, waterways, settlements, and even the names of some residents at a time when Thelma itself did not yet appear. By about 1900, transportation maps of Kentucky were recording a region increasingly tied together by roads, post offices, and railroads. These records capture the transition from a landscape organized primarily around farms, creeks, river travel, churches, and family neighborhoods into one connected more directly with Paintsville and the wider Big Sandy Valley.
The Levisa Fork was central to that geography. Its broad bends created pockets of usable bottomland between steep hills, while its valley provided one of the natural transportation corridors through this part of eastern Kentucky. When railroad construction followed the valley, places that had once been known mostly through family names, churches, streams, and informal neighborhoods acquired stations, post offices, and more permanent names.
The community that became Thelma emerged from precisely that process.
Buffalo Station and the Coming of the Railroad
The most detailed account of Thelma’s naming comes from Kentucky postal historian Robert M. Rennick. His description of the community was reproduced at length in a scholarly review of his The Post Offices of Kentucky’s Big Sandy Valley, making an unusually detailed account of Thelma’s early development available online.
According to Rennick, the Lexington and Big Sandy, later associated with the Chesapeake and Ohio system, established a station called Buffalo in the east bottom of the Levisa Fork. He placed it about three railroad miles south of Meek. The Buffalo name was reportedly connected with the belief that wild buffalo had once grazed in the area. By 1904, according to his account, railroad tracks had been laid across a four-square-mile neighborhood inside a bend of the Levisa.
The railroad changed the practical geography of the place. A settlement along the river could now be measured not only by distance from Paintsville or by the creek on which a family lived, but by its relationship to a station. Mail, goods, passengers, employees, and news could move through the valley more efficiently.
The railroad would remain part of Thelma’s identity for generations. Even in the twenty-first century, trains still follow the old Big Sandy route through the community, a visible reminder of the transportation system that helped give the place its early shape.
How Thelma Got Its Name
In 1905 local storekeeper Thomas L. Spencer petitioned the Post Office Department for a post office to serve the neighborhood. He did not originally ask that it be called Thelma.
Rennick wrote that Spencer proposed the name Concord, apparently taken from a church or the surrounding neighborhood. The problem was that Kentucky already had a Concord post office in Lewis County. Buffalo was unavailable as well because a Buffalo post office already operated in LaRue County. Postal officials therefore needed another name.
The office opened on June 5, 1905, under the name Thelma.
The name honored Thelma Meek, daughter of Warren Meek, editor and publisher of the Paintsville Herald. Rennick reported that Meek had moved to the Buffalo Station area and was raising poultry there. Virgie Childress became Thelma’s first postmaster. Spencer, the storekeeper who had petitioned for the office in the first place, succeeded her in March 1914 and remained postmaster until March 1928.
That sequence is important because it separates the postal name from the railroad name. The post office was Thelma from its opening in 1905. Rennick specifically stated that Thelma was the only name ever used by the post office itself. Buffalo and Buskirk belonged to the railroad and local geography rather than to a sequence of official post office names.
The postal identity proved durable. More than a century after Virgie Childress became postmaster, a United States Post Office still operates on Main Street in Thelma under ZIP code 41260.
Buffalo or Buskirk
The most interesting unresolved part of Thelma’s early history concerns its railroad station.
The Kentucky Atlas gives a straightforward version, stating that a Buskirk station on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad was established at the site in 1903 and was named for a local family.
Rennick gives a different sequence.
In his account, Buffalo was the original station. He says that sometime during the 1920s the railroad station was renamed Buskirk for another family of the area. The Buskirk name then remained in railroad use until passenger service ended.
Those accounts cannot both be entirely correct as written. If the station was already Buskirk in 1903, it could not have first been renamed Buskirk during the 1920s. Because Rennick’s account supplies considerably more detail, including Spencer’s 1905 petition, the Buffalo station, the Concord neighborhood, the postmasters, and the later railroad renaming, his chronology deserves serious weight. The Kentucky Atlas date should not simply be discarded, however, because it may reflect another railroad record or an early use of the Buskirk family name that requires further investigation.
For now, the safest historical interpretation is that Buffalo was being used as the railroad station name when the Thelma post office was established in 1905, while Buskirk became another important railroad name associated with the site. Establishing exactly when the formal railroad change occurred will require surviving Chesapeake and Ohio timetables, station lists, valuation maps, or contemporary newspaper references.
The disagreement is itself valuable. Local history is strongest when contradictions in the record are preserved and investigated rather than smoothed into a cleaner story than the evidence supports. The attached research likewise identifies this Buffalo versus Buskirk question as the principal unresolved issue in Thelma’s early chronology.
The School and Everyday Life at Thelma
Railroad stations and post offices leave strong records because large institutions documented them, but the quieter history of Thelma belonged to the people who lived between those institutions.
By the middle of the twentieth century, maps identify a Thelma School in the community. The 1954 United States Geological Survey map of the Paintsville quadrangle records Thelma School along with the Chesapeake and Ohio line and a railroad reference to Paintsville and Buskirk Station. A 1962 federal topographic survey provides another snapshot of the community immediately before the major developments of the 1960s and 1970s.
The school served purposes beyond classroom instruction. A surviving transcription of a September 28, 1955 Paintsville Herald obituary reports that funeral services for Mason Blanton were held at Thelma School. Blanton, a longtime area resident and employee of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, was then buried in a family cemetery at Thelma. The original newspaper page should be consulted before using the transcription as a formal primary citation, but the notice provides an important glimpse of the schoolhouse as a community gathering place.
That combination of school, railroad employment, family cemeteries, and neighborhood gatherings places Thelma within a familiar pattern in eastern Kentucky. A schoolhouse might educate children during the week and become a meeting place for funerals, public gatherings, and community events when needed. The railroad supplied wages to families whose lives remained rooted in the surrounding hollows, churches, and kin networks.
Much more of that social history likely survives in the Paintsville Herald and Big Sandy News. The Johnson County newspaper archive stretches back into the years before Thelma received its name, making it possible to follow individual families, businesses, school events, railroad workers, deaths, marriages, and community gatherings over decades.
Power Comes Through Thelma
By the 1960s Thelma’s place in the transportation network was joined by another role. The community became an important point in eastern Kentucky’s electrical system.
In July 1964 Kentucky Power’s employee publication The Illuminator reported that work was beginning on a new 138-kilovolt station at Thelma. The company had acquired the land, delivered the transformer, and cleared right of way for a transmission line from the Big Sandy generating plant. The project was part of a larger multimillion-dollar expansion of Kentucky Power’s system and was intended to strengthen service in the northern portion of the company’s Pikeville Division.
By February 1965 the station was operating.
The new Thelma station handled 138, 69, and 46 kilovolts and initially had a main transformer capacity of 50,000 kilovolt-amperes. A 138,000-volt transmission line connected it with the Big Sandy Plant, while additional lines tied Thelma into stations serving Paintsville, Van Lear, Prestonsburg, Allen, and surrounding portions of the division.
Kentucky Power treated the project as more than an isolated utility improvement. On March 1, 1965, city, county, school, and business officials gathered for a luncheon at the company’s Paintsville office to learn about the new facilities. The April issue of The Illuminator described the Thelma station as part of a $1.2 million high-voltage construction program and reported that visitors were invited to tour the new installation. Company representatives explained how the system would strengthen electrical service throughout the Paintsville area and connect with further improvements toward Allen.
The project marked another stage in Thelma’s development. Six decades earlier, the railroad had made the small river community part of a larger transportation system. Now high-voltage transmission lines were making it a node in an electrical network that stretched across eastern Kentucky.
The Thelma station did not disappear with the industrial world that created it. Modern Kentucky Public Service Commission records still identify Thelma as a significant point within Kentucky Power’s transmission system, showing how infrastructure built in the 1960s continues to shape the regional electrical network.
The Eastern Kentucky Comprehensive Rehabilitation Center
The most important institutional development in modern Thelma came in 1973.
On July 7 of that year, the Commonwealth of Kentucky opened the Eastern Kentucky Comprehensive Rehabilitation Center in the community. State officials later explained that the center was created so Kentuckians with significant disabilities could receive vocational, medical, and rehabilitative services together at one location. Eastern Kentucky was deliberately chosen because of the large number of people in the region with disabilities who were unemployed and needed access to comprehensive services.
Congressman Carl D. Perkins was an important supporter of placing the facility in eastern Kentucky. Perkins, whose congressional district included much of the region, had built a national reputation around education, labor, and programs intended to expand opportunity in economically distressed communities.
The center eventually took his name. Kentucky’s official history states that the facility was renamed for Perkins in 2007. Legislative records from that year document the reorganization involving the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Training Center, formalizing the name that continues to identify the facility.
By its fiftieth anniversary in 2023, Kentucky officials reported that more than 50,000 people had received services there since the center opened. State officials described it as one of only eight state-operated comprehensive rehabilitation centers in the United States at that time.
The center continues to operate in Thelma under the Kentucky Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. Its programs include occupational training, vocational evaluation, driver rehabilitation, job readiness, life-skills instruction, GED preparation, assistive services, and residential options for people receiving training. The state’s current description emphasizes employment and independence as the central goals of the institution.
For a community whose early identity had been shaped by a storekeeper seeking a post office and a railroad stop along the Levisa Fork, the arrival of a statewide rehabilitation center represented a remarkable transformation.
A Place Connected to the Region
Thelma never became a large incorporated town. Its historical importance comes instead from connection.
The railroad connected the community with Paintsville, the Big Sandy Valley, and the national transportation system. The post office gave the neighborhood a permanent name. The school served local families. The Kentucky Power station connected Thelma with the regional electrical grid. The rehabilitation center eventually brought people from across Kentucky into a place that had begun as a small community beside a railroad station.
Even the names reveal that history.
Buffalo preserves a memory of the landscape and an early railroad station. Concord survives in the story of the name Thomas Spencer wanted for the post office. Buskirk preserves the identity of a local family and the later railroad station. Thelma preserves the name of Thelma Meek and the influence of a newspaper family closely connected to Paintsville and Johnson County.
Unlike towns that received one name and carried it forward without complication, Thelma grew from overlapping geographic identities. The community, neighborhood, railroad station, and post office did not always use the same word at the same time. That is precisely why its documentary history is so revealing.
Why Thelma’s History Matters
The story of Thelma is not built around a famous battle, a nationally known industrialist, or a single dramatic disaster. It is instead the history of infrastructure and community.
A bend in the Levisa Fork became a railroad stop. A storekeeper requested a post office. A newspaper publisher’s daughter supplied the name. Children attended a neighborhood school. Railroad employees raised their families nearby. Electrical engineers chose the community as a strategic point from which to strengthen a growing power network. State and federal leaders later helped place a rehabilitation center there that would serve tens of thousands of Kentuckians.
Each development layered something new onto the same narrow valley.
The tracks through Thelma still recall the age when Buffalo and Buskirk appeared in railroad language. The post office still carries the name adopted in 1905. The electrical station remains part of the regional power system. The Perkins Center continues the mission that brought a major state institution to the community in 1973.
For a small place just east of Paintsville, Thelma has repeatedly found itself connected to changes much larger than itself. Its history demonstrates how an Appalachian community can be shaped not by one defining moment, but by more than a century of mail routes, railroad tracks, schoolhouses, transmission lines, public service, and the families who lived among them.
Sources & Further Reading
National Archives and Records Administration. “Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971.” Microfilm Publication M841, Records of the Post Office Department, Record Group 28. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” Microfilm Publication M1126, Records of the Post Office Department, Record Group 28. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
Rennick, Robert M. The Post Offices of Kentucky’s Big Sandy Valley: A Survey of the 341 Post Offices of Floyd, Johnson, Magoffin & Martin Counties. Lake Grove, OR: The Depot, 2002. https://search.worldcat.org/title/51958021
McGoff, Michael F. Review of The Post Offices of Kentucky’s Big Sandy Valley: A Survey of the 341 Post Offices of Floyd, Johnson, Magoffin & Martin Counties, by Robert M. Rennick. NAMES: A Journal of Onomastics 52, no. 2 (June 2004). https://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/article/download/1708/1707/3418
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813101798/kentucky-place-names/
Digital Archives of Johnson County, Kentucky. Paintsville Herald, Big Sandy News, and other Johnson County newspapers. https://johnson.advantage-preservation.com/
Morehead State University, Camden-Carroll Library. “Paintsville Herald.” ScholarWorks. Historical issues beginning in 1915. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/paintsville_herald/
Morehead State University, Camden-Carroll Library. “County Histories of Kentucky.” Works Progress Administration and Federal Writers’ Project materials relating to Johnson County. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/
Johnson County Clerk. “Records.” Deeds, wills, marriages, mortgages, liens, and other Johnson County public records. https://johnson.countyclerk.us/records/
Johnson County Public Library. “Patricia Patton Kentucky Room.” Local history collections including maps, photographs, newspapers, yearbooks, family materials, and manuscripts. https://johnsoncountypubliclibrary.org/using-your-library/
Crandall, A. R. Map of Morgan and Johnson Counties and Parts of Magoffin, Floyd and Martin. Kentucky Geological Survey, ca. 1880. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2006629764/
Mendenhall, C. S. Mendenhall’s Road Map of Kentucky. Cincinnati: C. S. Mendenhall, ca. 1900. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3951p.ct010423/
United States Geological Survey. Paintsville Quadrangle, Kentucky. Historical topographic maps, including surveys of the Thelma and Paintsville area. USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past
Kentucky Power Company. “Kentucky’s Thelma Station Now In Service.” The Illuminator, February 1965. https://www.virginiaroom.org/digital/files/original/77/6821/February1965.pdf Virginia Room
Kentucky Power Company. The Illuminator. July 1964. Contemporary account of construction of the new high-voltage station at Thelma. https://www.virginiaroom.org/digital/file/7921
Kentucky Power Company. The Illuminator. April 1965. Contemporary coverage of the completed Thelma station and regional electrical expansion. https://www.virginiaroom.org/digital/file/7930
Kentucky Career Center, Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. “Carl D. Perkins Vocational Training Center.” Commonwealth of Kentucky. https://kcc.ky.gov/Vocational-Rehabilitation/seeking-services/cdpvtc/Pages/default.aspx Kentucky Career Center
Kentucky Career Center, Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. “Programs Offered Overview.” Carl D. Perkins Vocational Training Center. https://kcc.ky.gov/Vocational-Rehabilitation/seeking-services/cdpvtc/programs/Pages/default.aspx Kentucky Career Center
Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet. “Carl D. Perkins Vocational Training Center Celebrates 50 Years of Service to Kentuckians with Disabilities.” 2023. https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/KYLABOR/bulletins/36fde83
Kentucky General Assembly. “House Bill 130.” 2007 Regular Session. Legislation concerning the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Training Center. https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/07rs/HB130.htm
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “Thelma, Kentucky.” University of Kentucky. https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-thelma.html
Hall, Mitchel. Johnson County, Kentucky: A History of the County and Genealogy of Its People Up to the Year 1927. Louisville, KY: Standard Printing Company, 1928. https://search.worldcat.org/title/53052874
Wells, J. K. A Short History of Paintsville and Johnson County. Paintsville, KY: Paintsville Herald, 1962. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4329279W/A_short_history_of_Paintsville_and_Johnson_County
Ely, William. The Big Sandy Valley: A History of the People and Country from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time. Catlettsburg, KY: Central Methodist, 1887. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcmassbookdig.bigsandyvalleyhi02elyw/
Crowe-Carraco, Carol. The Big Sandy. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1979. https://www.kentuckypress.com/
Jillson, Willard Rouse. The Big Sandy Valley: A Regional History Prior to the Year 1850. Louisville, KY, 1923. https://archive.org/
Scalf, Henry P. Kentucky’s Last Frontier. Pikeville, KY: Pikeville College Press, 1966. https://search.worldcat.org/
Connelley, William Elsey. The Founding of Harman’s Station, with an Account of the Indian Captivity of Mrs. Jennie Wiley and the Exploration and Settlement of the Big Sandy Valley in the Virginias and Kentucky. New York: Torch Press, 1910. https://www.loc.gov/item/10028358/
Blevins, Cameron, and Richard W. Helbock. “U.S. Post Offices.” Historical GIS dataset of American post offices, 1639–2000. https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/data-biography/
National Park Service. Multiple Resources of Johnson County, Kentucky. National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/64000234_text
Author Note: Thelma’s story shows how even a small Appalachian community can become connected to larger changes in transportation, electricity, education, and public service. The conflicting Buffalo and Buskirk railroad chronology also reminds us that local history sometimes raises questions that can only be settled through deeper archival research.