Rush, Kentucky, is difficult to understand if treated as a single, clearly bounded community. Its history developed along the Boyd and Carter County line, where Williams Creek, Rush Creek, railroad tracks, coal mines, stores, churches, and scattered settlements formed an interconnected industrial landscape.
Historical records variously identify the area as Rush, Geigerville, Kilgore, or by the names and numbers of nearby mines. A family might appear under one name in a census, another in a postal record, and still another in a mining report without having moved any considerable distance. These overlapping names were not simply the result of inconsistent recordkeeping. They reflected the way the community actually developed.
In 1874, the Kentucky General Assembly formally incorporated Geigerville and specifically described it as lying in both Boyd and Carter counties. Two years later, the legislature repealed the charter. During the decades that followed, Geigerville remained a local name while Rush became increasingly important as a postal, railroad, and mining center tied to the Ashland Coal and Iron Railway.
Rush eventually became the name that endured, but its history includes much more than the modern community. It encompasses an incorporated town that existed for only two years, a railroad built into the northeastern Kentucky coalfields, generations of miners and railroad workers, and several neighboring settlements that developed together across a county boundary.
Before Rush Was Rush
Long before Rush became the dominant community name, the surrounding country belonged to northeastern Kentucky’s growing mineral economy.
Iron furnaces had already transformed parts of Boyd and Carter counties by the middle of the nineteenth century. Star Furnace, west of Rush, was established in 1848, while nearby roads carried iron ore, timber, agricultural products, and travelers between farms, furnace settlements, and Ohio River markets.
The Geiger family became closely associated with the area that later formed part of Rush. A history published in the Sandy Valley Enquirer in 1942 recalled that the settlement had once been called Geigerville because of the family, whose members built homes and operated a general store there. William Lewis Geiger became particularly important in the surviving records through his connections to property, business, postal activity, and local churches.
By 1874, Geigerville was established enough to appear in Lewis Collins’s History of Kentucky. Collins placed the community about twelve miles east of Grayson and estimated its population at approximately 150 people.
That same year, Kentucky lawmakers gave the settlement something few small mountain communities possessed: a municipal charter.
The Incorporated Town of Geigerville
On February 3, 1874, the Kentucky General Assembly approved Chapter 178, “An Act to Incorporate the Town of Geigerville, in the Counties of Boyd and Carter.”
The wording is important because the legislature did not assign Geigerville exclusively to either county. Instead, the act formally recognized a town extending across the Boyd-Carter line.
Its boundaries were described through the homes and properties of local residents rather than modern streets or surveyed coordinates. The charter began at the northwest corner of Joel T. Buckley’s lot and traced the town limits through or near property associated with Allen T. Vaughn, John Plum, James Kilgore, John G. Black, Andrew Hall, James H. McBryer on Rush Creek, and Wiser Adkins.
Those names provide more than legal boundaries. They offer a glimpse of the community’s human geography in the 1870s.
The legislature appointed Wiser Adkins, D. A. Leffingwell, Alexander Howell, J. Calvin Lambert, and John W. Johnson as the first trustees. Future elections were to allow qualified voters to choose five trustees annually, while the town government received authority to pass ordinances and regulate local affairs.
Geigerville was also authorized to elect a police judge and town marshal, and the trustees could determine whether licenses for the retail sale of liquor would be permitted within the town. For a community now remembered as part of rural Rush, the charter created a surprisingly formal municipal structure.
It lasted only two years.
On February 9, 1876, the Kentucky General Assembly repealed the Geigerville charter. The repeal did not explain why, and the surviving legislation does not support a firm conclusion about whether the municipal government failed, residents lost interest in incorporation, or some other problem developed.
What can be stated confidently is that Geigerville existed as an incorporated Kentucky town from 1874 until 1876. The charter disappeared, but the community and its name remained.
Coal and the Railroad Transform the Valley
While Geigerville briefly experimented with municipal government, coal and railroad development were reshaping the surrounding valleys.
Ashland’s growing industrial economy required enormous quantities of coal, iron ore, timber, limestone, and other raw materials. Investors therefore pushed westward from the Ohio River into the mineral lands of Boyd and Carter counties, where railroad access could connect the region’s resources to furnaces and distant markets.
A later history of Ashland records that the Ashland Coal Company acquired approximately 9,000 acres known as the Coalton and Rush tracts during the years following the Civil War. Railroad and mining development soon became closely linked, eventually forming part of the system associated with the Ashland Coal and Iron Railway.
Sources differ slightly over the exact timing of the railroad’s arrival at Rush. The 1954 History of Ashland places the extension from Coalton to Rush around 1870 and states that mines opened at Kilgore and Rush during the same period. A 1942 Sandy Valley Enquirer account remembered coal being hauled by rail from Rush beginning in 1872.
Although the precise year is uncertain, the evidence clearly places the transformation in the early 1870s, when Rush became an important railroad and mining center.
The 1876 Kentucky Geological Survey map captures the district during this period of change. The railroad extending west from Ashland had reached the Rush and Geigerville area before later connections farther into Carter County were completed, placing the community near the end of an industrial railroad penetrating the hills from the Ohio River.
That position would soon change as construction continued westward.
Coalton and Rush Become an Industrial District
By 1880, federal records were already measuring coal production from the area on an industrial scale.
The United States Census mining directory listed the “Coalton & Rush mine, No. 7 seam” under the Ashland Coal and Iron Railway Company and reported production of 202,091 tons. The coal supplied the company’s own furnace and reached markets in Cincinnati, Louisville, and communities along the Ohio River.
The scale of that operation shows why Rush should not be understood simply as a small village. It belonged to a broader industrial district in which mines, railroad sidings, company property, stores, houses, and neighboring settlements were economically connected.
Coalton, Rush, Kilgore, Geigerville, Star Furnace, Meadow Branch, and other nearby names referred to different parts of the same developing landscape. A mine might appear under a company name in one record, a number in another, a railroad station in a third, and a nearby post office in a fourth.
That overlapping geography would characterize Rush for decades.
Rush Station and the Railroad West
Railroad construction eventually pushed beyond Rush and connected northeastern Kentucky more directly with the interior of the state.
By the early 1880s, construction extending westward from the Rush area was linking with railroad development approaching from central Kentucky. The connection helped establish the long-sought route between Ashland and Lexington, changing Rush from a place near the end of an industrial line into part of a larger transportation corridor.
An 1881 account from the Ashland Independent captures the landscape during this transition. A reporter traveling west rode an Ashland Coal and Iron coal train to Rush Station before continuing toward railroad construction beyond the operating line.
Within only a few years, communities that had depended heavily on wagons, horses, and difficult mountain roads were increasingly connected by rail.
Rush’s growing importance also appeared in another new technology. When the Ashland Telephone Exchange was incorporated in 1882, its stated purpose included establishing telephone communication among Ashland, Catlettsburg, Coalton, Rush, and Star Furnace.
By then Rush was no longer an isolated mountain settlement. It had become part of a connected industrial corridor extending outward from Ashland.
From Geigerville to Rush
Although Geigerville lost its charter in 1876, the name survived in postal records, church histories, schools, property descriptions, and local memory. Over time, however, Rush became the more prominent public identity.
Robert Rennick’s Kentucky place-name research records the establishment of the Rush post office on July 25, 1890, with Henry Artist as its first postmaster. The surviving records are clearer about when the postal name appeared than about why the name Rush was chosen.
By the 1890s, Rush appeared in commercial and postal directories, including an 1895 Rand McNally business atlas. Later maps continued to place it within the Williams Creek mining district.
Geigerville did not simply disappear when Rush gained prominence. Instead, the names overlapped. A resident could be associated with Geigerville in one record and Rush in another without having relocated, particularly when churches, schools, mines, and postal addresses used different local designations.
The Numbered Mines of Rush
Coal mining continued to expand around Rush during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Kentucky mine reports help trace that development through a succession of numbered operations.
State records place Mine No. 5 at Rush during the late 1880s and Mine No. 6 around 1890. By the opening years of the twentieth century, Mine No. 11 was also associated with the community.
These numbers were more than corporate labels. Around large mining operations, houses, paths, railroad sidings, schools, stores, and social networks could become identified with a particular mine number, creating informal communities that did not always appear neatly on official maps.
For that reason, Rush cannot be researched effectively by searching only for the name Rush. Residents and businesses may appear in records under the Ashland Coal and Iron Railway, Ashland Iron and Mining Company, Coalton, Kilgore, Meadow Branch, Midland, or a numbered mine location.
Together, those records reveal one industrial community spread across several names.
Stores, Hotels, and Railroad Life
Mining records explain where many men worked, but they reveal only part of everyday life.
A 1942 history by Jean Strother remembered the combined Kilgore and Rush area around the turn of the twentieth century as a prosperous community whose population may have approached 3,000 people. Because Rush and Kilgore were not neatly bounded incorporated towns, the figure should be treated as a broad local estimate rather than a formal census count.
The institutions described in the same account nevertheless demonstrate that the district supported considerably more than mines.
W. H. Castner and Company, the Ashland Coal and Iron Company, and Dr. George Burton operated stores at Rush. Bryant Pitts served as postmaster for a period, with the post office located inside Castner’s store.
The Ernest House became closely associated with railroad and commercial activity, serving travelers, telegraph operators, and salesmen passing through the community.
These details reveal an economy that had grown around mining and transportation. Railroad workers required lodging, families needed stores, companies depended on telegraph communication, and traveling salesmen came because residents and businesses purchased goods from outside the district.
Coal provided the economic foundation, but a broader community developed around it.
Rush and Kilgore
Rush and nearby Kilgore were so closely connected that their historical boundaries are sometimes difficult to separate.
Both communities developed along the same railroad and mining corridor, while the station serving the district stood between settlements whose residents shared businesses, churches, employment, and family connections.
The 1942 account placed the Kilgore railroad station roughly midway between Kilgore and Rush. John Chase Hatcher, originally from Louisa, reportedly served there as an agent for about twenty years, while his wife, Julia McNeal, daughter of Creight McNeal of Rush, had worked as a telegraph operator.
The same history associated families such as the Logans, Strothers, Hedricks, Barretts, Lynks, Fugetts, and Kilgores with the broader district. During World War I, residents served overseas while those at home contributed to Liberty Bond and Red Cross campaigns.
The newspaper credited the community with raising approximately $35,000, although the figure comes from a later retrospective account rather than contemporary financial records.
What matters most is the way residents remembered the district. Rush and Kilgore were not regarded as completely separate worlds, but as neighboring parts of a shared industrial community.
Churches and Schools
Churches and schools provide some of the strongest evidence for the continuity of the community beneath its changing names.
The 1942 Rush history remembered an early school at Norton Branch and credited the Geiger family with constructing a Southern Methodist church in 1865. It also reported that the Ashland Coal Company built another Methodist Episcopal church in 1872.
Some of these early dates come from local tradition and should be read with appropriate caution, but later records firmly establish the persistence of the Geigerville name in religious life. Denominational histories identify a Geigerville Church at Rush, showing that the older community identity survived long after incorporation ended.
William L. Geiger remained connected to that religious history. In 1891, he and his wife Esther reportedly conveyed church property to trustees of a Methodist Episcopal Church, South congregation.
Schools also preserved older place names. Geigerville School continued operating into the twentieth century even after Rush became the more familiar postal designation.
These institutions demonstrate why modern boundaries can misrepresent historic communities. A family might have a Rush postal address, worship at Geigerville Church, work at a numbered mine, and travel through a station associated with Kilgore without viewing those identities as contradictory.
Rush in the ARMCO Era
By the 1920s, the major corporate names had changed, but coal remained central to Rush.
The American Rolling Mill Company, better known as ARMCO, became a dominant industrial force in Ashland and acquired mining properties connected to the older Ashland coal and iron interests.
Kentucky Department of Mines records provide a detailed picture of Rush during this period. The 1924 report listed Rush No. 12 Mine under the American Rolling Mills Company with approximately ninety employees. It also connected Rush to the Hudson-Reed Coal Company and Midland Coal Company.
Hudson-Reed maintained its general office at Rush and operated the Huston Mine with fifteen employees, while Midland Coal Company also maintained its general office there and employed thirty-five men at the Midland Mine.
The 1925 mine tables continued to list the Midland operation in Carter County with Rush as its post office.
Those records illustrate the problem of trying to assign the historic community entirely to one county. A mine could appear officially in Carter County while using Rush as its postal address, while another operation tied to the same industrial district might be recorded in Boyd County.
The county line crossed the landscape, but it did not divide the local economy.
Dangerous Work Underground
The coal industry brought employment and commercial growth to Rush, but the work underground could be dangerous.
A 1925 Kentucky Court of Appeals case involving Midland Coal Company provides a detailed account of conditions inside one of the mines associated with the Rush district.
The case concerned the death of a miner named Rucker, approximately thirty years old, who had only recently begun working underground. Testimony described poor ventilation, gases entering active workings from an abandoned section, damaged ventilation brattice, and a furnace used to circulate air that was not operating.
Coal had also been shot with powder or dynamite, leaving smoke and gases underground. Workers reportedly experienced sickness, weakness, dizziness, and nausea.
On the morning of his death, Rucker worked with his brother loading mine cars. After complaining again about the poor air and helping push a loaded car toward the entry, he collapsed and died while being carried from the mine.
The case provides a human dimension missing from production tables and company reports. State records might describe a mine through its employment totals, seam thickness, production, or shipping point, but underground those statistics represented men working in darkness amid coal dust, explosives, machinery, and potentially dangerous gases.
For mining families around Rush, industrial growth always carried a cost.
The Railroad Changes Hands
The railroad that helped create industrial Rush also changed during the twentieth century.
The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway gained control of the Ashland Coal and Iron Railway during the 1920s. The AC&I was leased to the C&O beginning in 1925 and was eventually conveyed to the larger railroad in 1933.
For residents, the corporate transition did not immediately erase the railroad’s importance. Coal continued moving from the district, supplies arrived by rail, and railroad employees remained part of community life.
The change nevertheless marked the gradual disappearance of the independent industrial system that had tied the Ashland Coal and Iron Railway so closely to the surrounding mines.
Large company operations changed ownership, smaller mines appeared, and Rush entered another stage of its industrial history.
Rush in the 1940s
When the Sandy Valley Enquirer published its history of Rush in December 1942, the community had already changed considerably from its late nineteenth-century peak.
The newspaper looked back on the Geiger family, churches, railroad expansion, stores, and decades of coal production while describing an economy that was becoming more diversified.
Land formerly associated with the older coal and iron interests had passed through later companies, while timber cutting remained important. Coal mining had not disappeared, but smaller truck mines were increasingly part of the industry.
The newspaper reported three truck mines operating near Rush in 1942 and noted that the Ashland Firebrick Company was working local clay deposits.
The transition reflected broader changes across northeastern Kentucky. Large integrated coal and railroad systems no longer dominated the landscape as completely as they once had, but mineral extraction continued through smaller coal operations, clay production, timber cutting, and other resource industries.
Rush remained an industrial community even after the structure of that industry changed.
Geigerville Never Fully Disappeared
One of the most important lessons in the history of Rush is that older community identities rarely vanished as quickly as official records suggest.
Geigerville ceased to exist as an incorporated town in 1876, yet the name remained attached to churches, schools, families, deeds, and local memory for generations.
Kilgore remained nearby, while Rush gradually became the dominant postal and geographic name. Mining companies added still more identities through numbered mines and company properties.
Modern researchers therefore encounter records that can initially appear contradictory. One places a family in Boyd County, another in Carter County. One gives Geigerville as the community, another Rush, and another Kilgore. Mine records may provide only a company or mine number.
These documents often describe different parts of the same historical landscape.
Rather than forcing Rush into a single boundary or identity, its history makes more sense when the communities, mines, and institutions along Williams Creek and Rush Creek are viewed together.
Why Rush Matters
Rush matters because much of Appalachian history unfolded in communities that never became large cities or maintained permanent municipal boundaries.
The surrounding mines supplied coal to Ashland’s industrial economy and markets beyond northeastern Kentucky. The railroad connected the Ohio River with the interior of the state, while stores, hotels, telegraph offices, churches, schools, and family homes developed around the industries that transformed the valley.
For two years, part of this landscape even existed as the incorporated town of Geigerville, complete with trustees, a police judge, a marshal, and municipal powers granted by the Kentucky General Assembly.
The charter disappeared in 1876, but the community remained.
Generations continued mining coal, working for the railroad, operating stores, attending churches, raising families, and sending children to local schools on both sides of the Boyd-Carter line.
That continuity is the key to understanding Rush.
Its history belongs not to one name but to Geigerville, Rush, Kilgore, Williams Creek, Rush Creek, railroad stations, company properties, and numbered mines spread across two counties. The names and industries changed repeatedly, but the community endured.
Sources & Further Reading
Ashland Coal & Iron Railway Company. Collieries and Furnaces of the Ashland Coal & Iron Ry. Co., Ashland, Ky.: Sketches and Illustrations. Ashland, KY, 1900. Reference information available at https://loncoleman.com/references/.
Ashland Coal & Iron Railway Company. “Data Covering Right-of-Way, Main Line, Sidings, Spurs, Branches, Lands, etc.” February 2, 1924. Reference information available at https://loncoleman.com/references/.
Boyd County Clerk. Deed Records. Boyd County, Kentucky. See especially records involving William L. Geiger, Esther Geiger, the Ashland Coal Company, Ashland Coal & Iron Railway, Rush Creek, and Williams Creek. Reference information available at https://loncoleman.com/2023/10/13/geigerville-the-incorporated-city-1874-1876/.
Boyd County Public Library. Minnie Winder Genealogy and Local History Room. Ashland, Kentucky. Collections include local newspapers, photographs, surname files, cemetery records, and the William L. Geiger diaries. Reference information available at https://loncoleman.com/references/.
Carlson, John Edward. Geology of the Rush Quadrangle, Kentucky. Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-408. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1965. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/geology-rush-quadrangle-kentucky.
Carter County Clerk. Deed Books and Property Records. Carter County, Kentucky. Records include property transfers, railroad rights-of-way, mining lands, and parcels associated with Rush, Kilgore, and the Boyd-Carter county line.
Collins, Lewis. History of Kentucky. 1874. Carter County section. https://kygenweb.net/carter/main_links/history.html.
Crandall, Albert R. Report on the Geology of Greenup, Carter and Boyd Counties, and a Part of Lawrence. Kentucky Geological Survey, 1877. https://www.uky.edu/KGS/pdf/ic11_02.pdf.
Crandall, Albert R. “Report on the Geology of Greenup, Carter and Boyd Counties, and a Part of Lawrence.” In Reports of Special Subjects: Eastern Coal Field. Kentucky Geological Survey, 1884. https://books.google.com/books/about/Reports_of_Special_Subjects_C_Eastern_co.html?id=aBC8AAAAIAAJ.
Crawford, Hubert V. “Carter County – Railroads & Industry.” 1992. County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/.
Crawford, Hubert V. “Carter County – Schools.” 1993. County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/.
Fraley, Annadeen, and J. P. Fraley. Oral history interviews recorded at Rush, Kentucky, 1985. Morehead State University Special Collections and Archives. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/.
Geiger, William Lewis. Diaries, 1860–1897. Minnie Winder Genealogy and Local History Room, Boyd County Public Library, Ashland, Kentucky. Reference information available at https://loncoleman.com/references/.
History of Greenup Association. “Geigerville Church – 1888.” https://repository.sbts.edu/bitstream/handle/10392/6069/Tipton-History%20of%20Greenup%20Association-ocr.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1.
Kentucky. Acts of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Chapter 178, “An Act to Incorporate the Town of Geigerville, in the Counties of Boyd and Carter.” Approved February 3, 1874. https://loncoleman.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/GeigervilleCreation1874.pdf.
Kentucky. Acts of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Chapter 135, act repealing the incorporation of Geigerville. Approved February 9, 1876. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3683104&seq=7.
Kentucky Inspector of Mines. Annual Reports of the Inspector of Mines of Kentucky. Various years, including 1889, 1890, 1892, 1893, and 1902. Frankfort, KY. Kentucky Mine Mapping Information System. https://minemaps.ky.gov/Maps/AnnualReports.
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report, 1924. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky State Department of Mines, 1924. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1924.pdf.
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report, 1925. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky State Department of Mines, 1925. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1925.pdf.
Morehead State University. County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead, KY: Morehead State University Special Collections and Archives. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/.
National Archives and Records Administration. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–1971. Microfilm Publication M841. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html.
National Archives and Records Administration. Reports of Site Locations of Post Offices, 1837–1950. Microfilm Publication M1126. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html.
Patrick, James W., and Charles M. Patrick, eds. A History of Ashland, Kentucky, 1786 to 1954. Ashland, KY: Ashland Centennial Committee, 1954. https://www.kykinfolk.org/boyd/general/History-Ashland/HistoryAshland.pdf.
Pettit, Sheri K., comp. Carter County Newspaper Extractions, 1893–1930. Morehead State University and Carter County Public Library collections. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/.
Phalen, William Clifton. Economic Geology of the Kenova Quadrangle, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 349. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1908. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/b349.
Phalen, William Clifton. Kenova Folio, Kentucky-West Virginia-Ohio. Geologic Atlas of the United States, Folio 184. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1912. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/gf184.
Railroad Commission of Kentucky. Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of Kentucky. Frankfort, KY, 1887 and other years. https://books.google.com/.
Rand McNally and Company. Business Atlas and Shippers’ Guide. Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1895. Historical reference information available at https://roadsidethoughts.com/ky/rush-xx-boyd-mentions.htm.
Rennick, Robert M. “Boyd County – Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/36/.
Rennick, Robert M. “Boyd County – Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/154/.
Rennick, Robert M. “Carter County – Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/49/.
Rennick, Robert M. “Carter County – Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/171/.
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813126319/kentucky-place-names/.
Rennick, Robert M. “Northeastern Kentucky Post Offices.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection. Morehead State University, 1998. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/160/.
“Rush Was Settled By The Geigers.” Sandy Valley Enquirer, December 10, 1942. https://kygenweb.net/carter/news/s121042g.html.
Schenk, C., and W. C. Mitchell. Map of the Counties of Greenup, Carter and Boyd and a Part of Lawrence. Kentucky Geological Survey, 1876. Kentucky Historical Society. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/collection/Maps/id/200/.
Strother, Jean. “Daniel Boone Was Taken By Indians Into Carter County: Kilgore-Star Furnace.” Sandy Valley Enquirer, December 10, 1942. https://kygenweb.net/carter/news/s1210423.html.
The Independent. Ashland, Kentucky, 1881–1884. Morehead State University Digital Archives. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/ashland_independent/.
United States Census Office. Statistics of the Mining Industries of the United States at the Tenth Census, June 1, 1880. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1886. https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1880a_v15-13.pdf.
United States Geological Survey. Historic Topographic Maps of the Rush Quadrangle, Kentucky. USGS TopoView. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/.
United States Interstate Commerce Commission. Interstate Commerce Commission Reports: Valuation Reports. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. See material concerning the Ashland Coal & Iron Railway. https://books.google.com/.
United States. Federal Register. Bituminous Coal Division proceedings concerning Rush-area coal operations, including Hedrick Mine and Kilgore Mines Nos. 1 and 2, 1941–1942. https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/FR.
Works Progress Administration. “Boyd County – General History.” 1940. County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/313/.
Works Progress Administration and Historical Records Survey. “Boyd County – Historical Sketch.” 1938. County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/.
Works Progress Administration and Historical Records Survey. “Carter County – General History.” County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/.
Author Note: Rush is one of those Appalachian communities whose history cannot be contained by a single name or county line, because Geigerville, Rush, Kilgore, the railroad, and the surrounding mines all became part of the same landscape. I hope this article helps preserve the miners, railroad workers, families, churches, schools, and businesses that built a community spanning both Boyd and Carter counties.