Forgotten Appalachia Series – The Lost Wayne County Community of Stiltner
On East Lynn Lake today, the wooded shoreline gives little indication that a community once occupied part of the valley beneath and around the water. Boats move up the long reservoir, anglers work the coves, and roads reconstructed for the federal project carry visitors through a landscape that seems as though the lake has always belonged there.
It has not.
Before the reservoir, there was Stiltner, a small Wayne County community at the mouth of Brush Creek along the East Fork of Twelvepole Creek. It had a post office, roads, family cemeteries, homes, timber work, connections to coal mining, military veterans, businessmen, and residents whose names appeared regularly in the county newspaper. At different points, men from Stiltner represented Wayne County in the West Virginia Legislature. One local resident even patented an unusual dining table.
Then the federal government chose the East Fork of Twelvepole Creek for a major flood-control reservoir.
During the 1960s, properties were acquired, roads and utilities were moved, cemeteries were relocated, and the familiar geography surrounding Stiltner was gradually taken apart. Modern summaries sometimes give 1969 as the year Stiltner disappeared, but the federal record shows a longer process. Construction and relocation were underway throughout the later 1960s, while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers states that the East Fork of Twelvepole Creek was impounded and reservoir operations began in 1971.
What disappeared was not simply a dot on an old map. Stiltner had been a functioning Appalachian community for generations.
At the Mouth of Brush Creek
Stiltner developed around the mouth of Brush Creek in Wayne County’s Stonewall District, within the larger network of settlements lining the East Fork of Twelvepole Creek.
Historic geographic records preserve several names for the place. Stiltner was also associated with the names Fry and Mouth of Brush Creek, an indication of how small Appalachian communities could acquire different identities depending upon the family, post office, stream, or business being used as the local reference point. Hamill Kenny’s West Virginia Place Names, published while Stiltner was still a living community, connected the settlement with Brush Creek and the Stiltner family. Federal geographic records likewise preserve Fry and Mouth of Brush Creek as variant names.
The oldest Stiltner was not necessarily a town in the modern sense. There was no incorporated municipal government and no dense downtown filled with blocks of commercial buildings. Instead, like many rural Appalachian communities, Stiltner was a collection of households, farms, roads, family connections, businesses, and gathering places spread through the creek valley.
Its boundaries would have made more sense to the people who lived there than they do on a modern map.
A person might have lived “at Stiltner,” “near Stiltner,” on Brush Creek, along an East Lynn route, or somewhere in the Stiltner section. Contemporary newspapers used all of those kinds of descriptions. What tied them together was a shared local geography centered on the creek valley.
A Post Office Gives Stiltner a Name
One of the clearest signs that Stiltner had emerged as a recognized community came in 1906, when a post office was established there.
Federal postmaster appointment information identifies Sherman Maynard as postmaster beginning November 12, 1906. William D. Frasher succeeded him on May 31, 1907, followed by Frank H. Fry on June 18, 1914. William D. Frasher later returned as postmaster in 1929. The records are especially valuable because rural post offices often served as the closest thing an unincorporated community had to an official civic center.
By 1921, the West Virginia Blue Book included Stiltner among Wayne County’s post offices, further demonstrating that the name was not merely an informal neighborhood designation. Stiltner had become part of the official postal geography of West Virginia.
Compiled historical postal data places the opening of the Stiltner office in 1906 and its closing in 1968, meaning the post office survived for more than six decades and disappeared only as the East Lynn Reservoir project was transforming the valley.
For families living in the surrounding hollows, a post office represented more than letters. Mail connected rural Wayne County residents with newspapers, government agencies, relatives who had moved away, catalogs, businesses, military correspondence, and the wider nation. The Stiltner postmark was one small piece of evidence that this place belonged to the map.
Frank H. Fry and a Community with a Public Voice
Among the names most closely associated with Stiltner was Fry.
Frank H. Fry appears repeatedly in the surviving record. He served as one of Stiltner’s postmasters, but his activities reached considerably farther.
In 1915, Fry submitted an application to the United States Patent Office for an improved dining table. The patent, granted on April 18, 1916, identified him specifically as Frank H. Fry of Stiltner, West Virginia.
His design called for an extensible dining table with a revolving centerpiece that could be turned so diners could reach food positioned on the opposite side. The centerpiece also incorporated sliding drawers intended to hold napkins and eating utensils. It was an inventive attempt to solve an ordinary household problem, and its patent record preserves Stiltner’s name in one of the federal government’s most distinctive collections.
Fry later entered state politics.
Official legislative records for 1925 identify F. H. Fry, Democrat, of Stiltner as one of Wayne County’s members of the West Virginia House of Delegates. Three decades later, the 1955 West Virginia Blue Book identified Julius C. Fry, also of Stiltner, as a Wayne County delegate.
Those records matter because they help correct the impression that Stiltner was merely an isolated settlement whose history began and ended with its destruction. People living there participated in county and state political life. Stiltner was sufficiently established that a person’s address could appear beside the names of legislators representing Wayne County at Charleston.
Roads Into Stiltner
Transportation gradually pulled Stiltner more closely into the surrounding county.
In January 1926, the Wayne County News mentioned a recently completed road contract between East Lynn and Stiltner. The same issue listed M. J. Stiltner among Stonewall District petit jurors and announced the birth of a son to Mr. and Mrs. App Queen of near Stiltner.
Those small notices are valuable precisely because they are ordinary. They reveal a community not through a later history written after it vanished, but through the routine business of county life while it still existed. People served on juries, children were born, and road crews worked their way through the valley.
Improving the road between East Lynn and Stiltner would have mattered considerably in an area where creeks, steep hillsides, mud, and seasonal flooding could make a short distance difficult to travel.
The improvements continued.
By October 1941, state road workers were surfacing six miles of road beginning at East Lynn, passing Stiltner, and continuing toward Cove Gap and the Lincoln County line. Blacktop was to replace another stretch of the older road system, providing Stiltner residents with a better connection toward neighboring communities.
The road would later become especially important because the East Lynn Reservoir project did not merely cover land. It forced the transportation network itself to move.
Timber, Coal, and Work in the Hills
Stiltner’s economy reflected the resources surrounding it.
The hills of Wayne County contained timber, coal, and small farms, and surviving records show Stiltner residents participating in more than one part of that economy.
One of the clearest examples came in 1938, when businessman and sawmill operator L. A. Ramey prepared to expand his timber operations.
The Wayne County News reported that Ramey’s mill was then located at Stiltner and that he had received a provisional contract to supply cut timber to J. D. Westcott & Son of Williamson, a broom-handle manufacturer. Beech, birch, and hard maple from Wayne County were to be cut into stock that could be finished at the Williamson plant.
The planned output was substantial for a small rural operation. The newspaper reported that the Stiltner mill could produce approximately 5,000 broom-handle stocks each day while operating five days per week. About six men were expected to work there. Ramey planned eventually to move the operation to Wayne, where railroad connections would make shipment easier.
Stiltner therefore participated in an Appalachian timber economy that stretched beyond the immediate creek valley. Trees cut in the hills around Wayne County could be processed locally, shipped to Williamson, and transformed into manufactured goods for markets far beyond West Virginia.
Coal also appears in the documentary record associated with the Stiltner name. Federal coal-pricing records from the early 1940s identify a Stiltner operation in Wayne County and connect H. F. Fry with the listing. The surviving evidence does not suggest that Stiltner became a major company coal town comparable to communities elsewhere in southern West Virginia, but it does show that coal extraction formed another part of the local economic landscape.
Stiltner’s story was therefore neither purely agricultural nor purely industrial. Like many smaller Appalachian settlements, its economy existed somewhere between the two.
Families, Veterans, and the World Beyond the Creek
Names scattered through newspapers and public records provide some of the clearest glimpses of the people who called Stiltner home.
In 1926, when the Wayne County News attempted to identify Wayne County’s surviving veterans of the Civil War, it listed John D. Clark of Stiltner among the county’s remaining Confederate veterans. By then the Civil War had been over for more than sixty years, yet a man who had lived through it still resided in the community.
The next generation would be drawn into another war.
Elmer Adkins was born at Stiltner on February 29, 1920, the son of Parker and Chloe Clark Adkins. The West Virginia Veterans Memorial records his birthplace and family history before tracing his service during World War II. Adkins served in the United States Army and was killed in 1945.
Other Stiltner men served during the war as well. Newspaper accounts preserved names such as Coy Spence, a Stiltner soldier who served as a rifleman with the 350th Infantry Regiment during fighting in Italy.
Those records connect an otherwise small Wayne County community with national events. Men who knew the roads around Brush Creek and Twelvepole Creek found themselves fighting thousands of miles from home.
Meanwhile, ordinary local life continued.
Churches, family cemeteries, births, marriages, deaths, stores, small businesses, roads, and kinship networks tied Stiltner to East Lynn, Wayne, Cove Gap, Lincoln County, and other communities scattered through the surrounding hills.
A 1946 obituary for Lige Maynard provides another revealing glimpse. His funeral services were held at Stiltner Baptist Church, and he was buried at Fry Cemetery near Stiltner. The notice named relatives who lived in Stiltner and elsewhere in the Big Sandy region, demonstrating how family connections crossed the lines between communities and states.
Even cemeteries carried the name. Burial references to Stiltner Cemetery appear in regional newspapers, including the 1932 burial of Anthony Tomlin in Wayne County.
These were not anonymous people occupying land that later became useful for a reservoir. They were families with places where children were born, veterans returned home, worshippers gathered, and generations were buried.
Stiltner in the 1950s
Stiltner remained connected to Wayne County’s economic and political life well into the 1950s.
In January 1955, the Wayne County News reported that Buster Maynard and Basil Napier of near Stiltner had purchased the Wayne Bus Company. After approval from the West Virginia Public Service Commission, the business was to become the M. and N. Bus Line and continue serving communities between Wayne and Route 10 in Lincoln County.
That same decade, Julius C. Fry of Stiltner served in the West Virginia House of Delegates.
Nothing about those records suggests a community already dead or abandoned. Stiltner was still producing businessmen, public officials, families, and travelers. Its post office still existed. Roads passed through it. People continued to use Stiltner as a recognizable address.
Yet federal planners were beginning to look closely at Twelvepole Creek.
Flooding had long been part of life in the valley. The Wayne County News was reporting major Twelvepole Creek flooding as early as the 1920s, and concern over flood damage eventually became part of a much larger federal effort to control water throughout the Ohio River basin.
The project that would erase Stiltner from the inhabited landscape was coming.
The East Lynn Reservoir Project
Congress authorized the East Lynn project under the Flood Control Act of 1962.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers selected a site on the East Fork of Twelvepole Creek near East Lynn for a multipurpose reservoir intended to provide flood control along with water-quality, fish and wildlife, low-flow, and recreational benefits.
Planning soon turned into construction.
In 1965, the Wayne County News reported that the first major physical work would involve moving portions of State Route 37. Approximately 3.5 miles were scheduled for relocation as the government prepared the valley for the reservoir. The road contract represented only the beginning of a much larger transformation.
Federal engineering reports reveal the enormous scale of what followed.
The reservoir project required miles of state roads to be reconstructed or relocated, along with power lines, telephone lines, and gas lines. One school building was affected. Even more striking was the cemetery program. Corps reports identified 34 cemeteries containing roughly 2,460 graves that had to be addressed as part of the East Lynn Reservoir project.
Land acquisition reached hundreds of individual tracts.
In 1966, the Corps expected to acquire approximately 553 tracts. By 1968, hundreds had already been purchased while road construction, outlet works, dam access, and cemetery relocation proceeded simultaneously. The project was not a single construction site. It was an attempt to remake an inhabited Appalachian valley on a landscape-wide scale.
Every line in those engineering reports represented something physical.
A tract was someone’s property.
A relocated road was the road a family had followed to church, school, work, or a neighbor’s house.
A relocated utility line had served homes.
A cemetery was generations of family history rooted in one piece of ground.
For people living around Stiltner, the East Lynn project was not simply the construction of a dam downstream. It meant the dismantling of the geography they knew.
Moving the Dead
Among the most powerful reminders of what reservoir construction required were the cemeteries.
Appalachian family burial grounds were often established on ridges, hillsides, farms, and small parcels close to the families who used them. Some contained generations of relatives whose descendants still lived nearby. Creating East Lynn Lake meant that burial places within the project area could not simply remain where they were.
Graves were identified, removed, and reinterred.
Community Memorial Gardens near Wayne became especially important during this process. The cemetery was greatly enlarged when graves from the East Lynn Lake area were moved there by the federal government. Wayne County researchers later worked to preserve information about the original cemeteries, the people buried in them, and their reinterment locations.
Research compiled by Seibern K. Hazelett reportedly recorded original cemetery locations, individual graves, relocation sites, and information about the deceased. Such records are invaluable because a reservoir can erase the physical relationship between a family and its burial ground even when the stones and remains themselves are moved.
The cemetery relocations demonstrate why calling Stiltner simply a “town flooded by a lake” is inadequate.
The government was not flooding empty acreage. It was altering a cultural landscape whose history extended beneath the surface, into cemeteries and family ground as well as homes and roads.
The End of Stiltner
There is a temptation to assign Stiltner one final date.
Some later accounts state that the community was submerged in 1969. That year makes sense as shorthand for the period when the reservoir project was rapidly transforming the valley, but the federal construction record makes the story more complicated.
By the middle and later 1960s, the Corps was buying land, relocating roads, moving cemeteries, constructing outlet works, and preparing the reservoir area. Stiltner’s post office is reported to have closed in 1968, itself an indication that the community was being dismantled before water finally filled the completed reservoir.
The Corps states that the East Fork of Twelvepole Creek was impounded in 1971 and reservoir operations began that year. That makes 1971 the safest date for the beginning of the lake itself, even though Stiltner’s disappearance as a functioning community took place over the preceding years.
It was therefore less an instant drowning than a drawn-out removal.
Families left.
Property passed into federal ownership.
Roads moved.
Utilities moved.
Graves moved.
The post office closed.
Buildings disappeared.
Finally, water occupied part of the landscape where the old community had stood.
What Replaced the Old Valley
East Lynn Lake became a permanent part of Wayne County.
The modern U.S. Army Corps of Engineers describes a project containing 24,821 acres of lands and waters. The reservoir stretches approximately twelve miles, covers about 1,005 acres at summer pool, and has approximately 44 miles of shoreline. The dam itself is a rolled-earth structure standing 133 feet high and 652 feet long.
The lake brought benefits that federal planners had promised. It became part of the region’s flood-control system and created a large public recreation area used for fishing, boating, camping, wildlife management, and hunting.
Those benefits are real, but so is the earlier landscape.
Beneath the modern recreational geography are older property lines, roads, hollows, cemeteries, family associations, work sites, and community names. Stiltner belongs to that older map.
The lake did not erase the historical record, but it made the physical community much harder to see.
Remembering Stiltner
Stiltner survives today in fragments.
It survives in a 1906 postmaster appointment.
It survives in a 1916 patent identifying Frank H. Fry as an inventor from Stiltner, West Virginia.
It survives in an old West Virginia Blue Book and legislative rosters.
It survives in the Wayne County News, where a road contractor finished a job between East Lynn and Stiltner, a family announced the birth of a son, a sawmill prepared to turn Wayne County timber into thousands of broom-handle stocks, and state workers laid blacktop past Stiltner toward Cove Gap.
It survives in military records, cemetery books, census schedules, death notices, maps, deeds, and the names of families such as Fry, Maynard, Napier, Adkins, Ramey, Frasher, Stiltner, Spence, Queen, and Clark.
Most importantly, those records reveal that Stiltner was never merely a place waiting to be flooded.
For more than half a century under that name, and for longer through the families who occupied the surrounding valley, it was part of everyday Wayne County life. People received their mail there, operated businesses there, traveled its roads, served in wars, entered politics, worshipped, raised children, buried relatives, and called the place home.
East Lynn Lake changed the map so completely that a person traveling through the area today could easily believe the reservoir is the landscape’s defining feature.
Historically, the opposite is true.
The lake is the newcomer.
Before the shoreline, boat ramps, campgrounds, and broad stretches of water, there was another landscape along Brush Creek and the East Fork of Twelvepole Creek. Stiltner belonged to that landscape, and although the community itself is gone, the documentary trail is strong enough to put its name, its people, and part of its world back on the map.
Sources & Further Reading
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Records.” Includes Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971, Microfilm Publication M841, Record Group 28. Accessed October 16, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “West Virginia Postmasters Appointment Records, 1857–1971.” A&M 3026. West Virginia University Libraries. Accessed October 16, 2026. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/1217
Harris, John T., comp. and ed. West Virginia Blue Book, 1921. Charleston, WV: West Virginia Legislature, 1921. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/legisdocs/publications/bluebook/WVS_Bluebook_1921.pdf
West Virginia Legislature. Acts of the Legislature of West Virginia, 1925. Charleston, WV: State of West Virginia, 1925. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/legisdocs/publications/acts/Acts_1925_MunicipalCharters.pdf
Myers, J. Howard, comp. and ed. West Virginia Blue Book, 1955. Charleston, WV: West Virginia Legislature, 1955. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/legisdocs/publications/bluebook/WVS_Bluebook_1955.pdf
West Virginia Legislature. Acts of the Legislature of West Virginia, 1955–1956. Charleston, WV: State of West Virginia, 1956. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/legisdocs/publications/acts/Acts_1955-1956.pdf
Fry, Frank H. “Dining-Table.” U.S. Patent 1,179,909. Filed August 19, 1915. Patented April 18, 1916. https://patents.google.com/patent/US1179909A/en
Wayne County News. January 28, 1926. West Virginia Archives and History. References to M. J. Stiltner, the App Queen family, and the road between East Lynn and Stiltner. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcn260128.html
Wayne County News. “Ranks of the Blue and Gray in Wayne County Are Thinned Out.” May 27, 1926. West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcn260527.html
Wayne County News. 1936 issues. Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society transcription. Includes references to Lindsey Maynard, Sherman Maynard, Leslie Scaggs, and Frank Tomblin of Stiltner. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201936.htm
Wayne County News. September 2, 1938. Contemporary reporting on the Ramey mill at Stiltner and its broom-handle stock operation. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201938.htm
United States Government. Federal Register 6, no. 247. December 20, 1941. Federal coal-pricing schedules containing Wayne County mining operations associated with Stiltner. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Federal_Register_1941-12-20-_Vol_6_Iss_247_%28IA_sim_federal-register-find_1941-12-20_6_247%29.pdf
Wayne County News. April 18 and October 31, 1941. References to residents of the Stiltner section and road surfacing from East Lynn past Stiltner toward Cove Gap. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201941.htm
Wayne County News. 1945 issues. Contemporary World War II coverage including Pvt. Coy Spence of Stiltner. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201945.htm
West Virginia Archives and History. “Elmer Adkins.” West Virginia Veterans Memorial. Charleston: West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/hiStory/wvmemory/vets/adkinselmerwayne/adkinselmerwayne.html
Wayne County News. “Wayne Bus Line Sold to Maynard and Napier.” January 28, 1955. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201955.htm
Wayne County News. January 8, January 29, and May 5, 1965. Contemporary reports concerning East Lynn Reservoir construction, appropriations, and relocation of State Route 37. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201965.htm
United States Army Corps of Engineers. Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers on Civil Works Activities, 1966. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Chief_of_Engineers%2C_U.S._Army%2C_Civil_Works_activities-_1966_Annual_report_for_the_fiscal_year_ended_June_30%2C_pertaining_to_rivers_and_harbors%2C_flood_control%2C_beach_erosion_and_related_purposes_-_USACE-p16021coll6-1296.pdf
United States Army Corps of Engineers. Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers on Civil Works Activities, 1968. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/1968_Annual_report_of_the_Chief_of_Engineers_on_Civil_Works_activities_-_USACE-p16021coll6-1512.pdf
United States Army Corps of Engineers. Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers on Civil Works Activities, 1969. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/1969_Annual_report_of_the_Chief_of_Engineers_on_Civil_Works_activities_-_USACE-p16021coll6-1430.pdf
United States Army Corps of Engineers. Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers on Civil Works Activities, 1970. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/1970_Annual_report_of_the_Chief_of_Engineers_on_Civil_Works_activities%2C_volume_II_-_USACE-p16021coll6-467.pdf
United States Army Corps of Engineers. Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers on Civil Works Activities, 1972. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/1972_Annual_report%2C_Chief_of_Engineers_on_Civil_Works_activities_-_USACE-p16021coll6-499.pdf
United States Army Corps of Engineers. Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers on Civil Works Activities, 1974. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/1974_Annual_report_of_the_Chief_of_Engineers_on_Civil_Works_activities_-_USACE-p16021coll6-521.pdf
United States Army Corps of Engineers. East Lynn Lake, Twelvepole Creek Dam: Continued Operation and Maintenance Environmental Impact Statement. 1974. EPA 741858 / COE-WV-741858. https://trid.trb.org/View/1292626
United States Army Corps of Engineers. Design Memorandum No. 4C, Master Plan Update for East Lynn Lake, Twelvepole Creek, West Virginia. Huntington District. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Design_memorandum_no._4c%2C_master_plan_update_for_East_Lynn_Lake-_Twelvepole_Creek%2C_West_Virginia-_Final_-_USACE-p16021coll7-21599.pdf
United States Army Corps of Engineers. Water Control Manual for East Lynn Lake: East Fork of Twelvepole Creek. Huntington District, 2001. https://water.usace.army.mil/cda/documents/wc/2222/ELT_WCM_redacted.pdf
United States Army Corps of Engineers. “Twelve Pole Creek.” Sustainable Rivers Program. Records the 1971 impoundment of the East Fork of Twelvepole Creek and beginning of reservoir operations. Accessed October 16, 2026. https://www.iwr.usace.army.mil/sustainablerivers/sites/twelvepole/
United States Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville District. “East Lynn Lake.” Accessed October 16, 2026. https://www.lrd.usace.army.mil/Missions/Projects/Display/Article/3641237/east-lynn-lake/
United States Census Bureau. United States Census Population Schedules, Wayne County, West Virginia, Stonewall Magisterial District. 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, and 1950. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/online-resources
National Archives and Records Administration. “1950 Census: Wayne County, West Virginia.” 1950 Census website. https://1950census.archives.gov/search/?county=Wayne&page=1&state=WV
West Virginia Archives and History. “County Records on Microfilm: Wayne County.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Includes deeds, wills, births, deaths, marriages, court records, surveys, and military records. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/bluenote.html
United States Geological Survey. “TopoView.” Historical Topographic Map Collection. Accessed October 16, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/topoview
Krebs, Charles E., and D. D. Teets Jr. Cabell, Wayne and Lincoln Counties. County Geologic Report 4. Morgantown: West Virginia Geological Survey, 1913. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Prodesc/proddesc_10497.htm
West Virginia Archives and History. “Districts and Place Names.” Based in part on the New Descriptive Atlas of West Virginia. Charleston: West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/hiStory/communities/districtplacenames.html
Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. Wayne Cemetery Volume Four: Community Memorial Gardens. Documents the cemetery’s enlargement during construction of East Lynn Lake and reinterment of graves removed from the reservoir area. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/wayne_cemetery_book4.php?thisPage=wayne_cemetery_book4
West Virginia Archives and History. “Seibern K. Hazelett.” History Hero materials describing Hazelett’s research into cemeteries relocated during construction of East Lynn Lake. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/historyday/hisher2020.html
Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. Wayne Cemetery Book 5: Stiltner Cemetery. https://wcghswv.org/wayne_cemetery_book5.php?thisPage=wayne_cemetery_book5
Big Sandy News-Recorder. March 18, 1932. Obituary of Anthony Tomlin, noting burial at Stiltner Cemetery in Wayne County. https://www.lckghs.com/index.php/en/obituaries/2-uncategorised/376-obit-1932
West Virginia State Archives. “Boyd B. Stutler Photograph Collection.” Ph78-001, item 14:51, photograph of F. H. Fry of Stiltner. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/collections/photos/ph78-001.html
Kenny, Hamill. West Virginia Place Names: Their Origin and Meaning, Including the Nomenclature of the Streams and Mountains. Piedmont, WV: Place Name Press, 1945.
Blevins, Cameron, and Richard W. Helbock. U.S. Post Offices. Harvard Dataverse. Historical geographic dataset based on federal postal records. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/NUKCNA
Blevins, Cameron. “The Data Biography of the U.S. Post Offices Dataset.” Geography of the Post. Accessed October 16, 2026. https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/data-biography/
Dickinson, Kay Stamper, and Jack L. Dickinson. Last Train to Dunlow: History from the Hollows of Wayne County, West Virginia and the Coming of the N & W Railroad, 1870–1940. 2005. https://books.google.com/books?id=RlyrvgEACAAJ
Thompson, Robert Michael. East Lynn Booming: The Story of a Coal Town and Other Tales from the Twelve Pole Valley. Genoa, WV: R. M. Thompson, 2007. https://search.worldcat.org/title/363205071
Birdwell, Leslie. “East Lynn Lake.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Charleston: West Virginia Humanities Council. Accessed October 16, 2026. https://wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1929
Hardesty, H. H. Hardesty’s Historical and Geographical Encyclopedia: Maps and Histories of Wayne, Lincoln and Cabell Counties, West Virginia. Chicago and Toledo: H. H. Hardesty & Co., 1884. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/wayne_county_hisotry.php?thisPage=wayne_county_hisotry
Author Note: Stiltner reminds us that the waters of an Appalachian lake can hide an older landscape of homes, roads, workplaces, cemeteries, and family memories. I hope preserving its story helps readers see East Lynn Lake not only for what stands there today, but also for the Wayne County community that came before it.