Appalachian Community Histories – Breeding Creek, Knott County: Redfox, Cody, and a Community Kept in the Records
Breeding Creek is one of those Knott County places whose history is best read through several names at once. In the records, it appears beside Redfox, Breedings Creek, Red Fox, Cody, Carr Fork, Breeding Branch, and Carr Creek Lake. That overlap is part of the story. Breeding Creek was not only a stream. It was a community corridor, a road line, a school name, a family place, and one of the small hollows tied into the larger history of Carr Fork.
Knott County itself was formed in 1884 and named for James Proctor Knott, Kentucky’s governor from 1883 to 1887. Breeding Creek’s documented story sits mostly in the southern part of the county, near the Blackey quadrangle, Carr Fork, Redfox, Cody, and the later Carr Creek Lake area. Kentucky Atlas places Redfox about twelve miles south of Hindman on Breeding Creek and notes that the place was also known as Breedings Creek and Red Fox.
The geography is important because the names can be confusing. A U.S. Geological Survey drainage report places Breeding Creek in the North Fork Kentucky River basin and records Breeding Creek near Isom, Breeding Creek at its mouth, Carr Fork above Breeding Creek, Carr Fork above Defeated Creek, and Carr Fork at Cody. In that table, Breeding Creek at its mouth is listed with a drainage area of 5.68 square miles, while Carr Fork at Cody is listed just below the Breeding Creek and Defeated Creek entries. The map record shows why the communities and streams are so hard to separate in local memory.
Redfox and the Breeding Creek Name
Redfox is the strongest community name tied to Breeding Creek in the reference record. Kentucky Atlas says Redfox was settled in the early nineteenth century, was primarily farming oriented, and later had residents who worked in regional coal mines. The same source also says Redfox has long been known as a racially integrated community, which becomes especially important when the school records from the 1950s and 1960s are read beside the place-name record.
The post office history gives the community another layer. Kentucky Atlas records the Redfox post office opening in 1888, closing in 1890, and reopening in 1906. This kind of post office trail matters in Appalachian local history because many communities appear in federal and state records under the name of a post office, a creek, a school, or a nearby railroad or road point rather than under one permanent town name.
Robert M. Rennick’s work on Knott County post offices is also one of the best source trails for these names. His Morehead State University publication is described as a historical survey of post offices and communities in Knott County, and search results for the PDF connect Cody and related communities to the mouth of Breeding Creek. It should be used alongside Kentucky Atlas, USGS maps, and county records when tracing exact name changes.
Cody at the Mouth of Breeding Creek
Cody gives Breeding Creek a second major historical anchor. Kentucky Atlas places Cody about ten miles south of Hindman on Carr Fork at the mouth of Breeding Creek. It says Cody was inundated by the Carr Creek reservoir in 1976, was incorporated in 1961, was later dissolved, and had a post office that opened in 1897 and closed in 1972.
That makes Cody part of the lost landscape around Carr Creek Lake. The modern lake is operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Louisville District. The Corps describes Carr Creek Lake as being in the mountainous region of southeastern Kentucky, about sixteen miles from Hazard and eighteen miles from Whitesburg. The dam is 8.8 miles above the mouth of Carr Fork, and the project was designed, built, and operated by the Louisville District as part of flood reduction, water supply, water quality, recreation, wildlife, and fisheries work.
For Breeding Creek, the lake changed more than scenery. It altered the relationship between old roads, schools, homes, post offices, cemeteries, and the creek mouth. Cody’s disappearance under the reservoir helps explain why older residents and older documents may preserve names and locations that no longer appear in the same way on the modern landscape.
Breeding Creek School and the Fight Over Desegregation
The most nationally significant record tied to Breeding Creek may be the school desegregation case from 1963. The Notable Kentucky African Americans Database says that by 1955, Yellow Creek School had closed and 38 students were enrolled in Breeding Creek Colored School, citing the Kentucky Public School Directory for 1955 to 1956. HathiTrust confirms the existence of that Kentucky public school directory series and identifies the 1955 to 1956 volume as a limited search item published by the Kentucky Department of Education.
The issue did not end with a directory listing. Southern School News reported on September 1, 1963, that a lawsuit had been filed in U.S. District Court by Louisville attorney James A. Crumlin on behalf of seventeen elementary pupils and their parents, all residents of Redfox. The suit said that Black children in grades one through six were assigned to Breeding School and that the school board had refused to end the practice. The complaint described Breeding Creek School as old, poorly equipped, and inferior to the elementary schools attended only by white children.
The same report said Knott County school superintendent Beckham Combs argued that the case involved Carr Creek Elementary and that the board was waiting to see whether a dam project would require replacement of the present school building. It also reported that a group of Black children attempted to register at Carr Creek Elementary on August 19, 1963, and that only three seventh grade students were registered while the others were not permitted to enter grades one through six. The following day, parents announced a boycott.
A later Southern School News litigation summary identified the case as Rimbert v. Knott County Board of Education. It said the case was filed on August 6, 1963, seeking further desegregation, and that on September 11, 1963, District Judge Mac Swinford ordered an immediate end to all segregation. That makes Breeding Creek School more than a local schoolhouse reference. It places the Breeding Creek and Redfox area inside the larger civil rights history of Appalachian Kentucky.
Coal, Archaeology, and the Built Landscape
Breeding Creek’s later records also show the pressure of coal development. A 2002 Kentucky Archaeology notice summarized Robert B. Hand’s archaeological survey of a proposed coal mine operation along Breeding Creek in Knott County. The survey recorded a previously undocumented historic house site, 15KT112, described as a twentieth century one story boxed Saddlebag house with a rear shed addition. The notice also explained that boxed, double pen, and Saddlebag houses were among the most common early twentieth century house types in Eastern Kentucky.
That brief archaeology record is valuable because it shows the kind of home landscape often missing from official histories. It does not prove a grand event. Instead, it documents an ordinary house type, an ordinary hollow, and the way coal permit work sometimes preserved traces of domestic life in places where written records are scattered. The site was not considered eligible for the National Register of Historic Places because of poor integrity and limited remaining archaeological features, but the description still helps reconstruct the built environment of Breeding Creek.
Coal also appears in the modern environmental record around Redfox and Breeding Branch. A Kentuckians for the Commonwealth photograph identifies H & D Coal Company’s Red Fox mine in Knott County, noting a hollow fill at the head of Breeding Branch, which flows into Breeding Creek and Carr Creek Lake. That source should be treated as a lead and verified against Kentucky mine permit records, but it points to the continuing connection between Breeding Creek, coal extraction, and downstream water concerns.
Water Quality and Carr Fork
The Kentucky Division of Water’s 2013 Carr Fork Watershed Bacteria TMDL places Breeding Branch inside a wider watershed study. The report says the Carr Fork watershed above the Carr Fork Reservoir dam lies entirely in southern Knott County, east of Vicco and south of Hindman and Pippa Passes. It also says state highways 1231, 3391, 1393, 15, 160, and 1410 cross portions of the watershed, mainly along Carr Fork Reservoir and its tributaries.
That report listed Breeding Branch from river mile 0.9 to 4.2 as impaired for E. coli under primary contact recreation use, with unspecified domestic waste identified as a suspected source. The report also says Kentucky Division of Water and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers staff jointly sampled tributaries of Carr Fork Reservoir for E. coli during the 2007 and 2008 primary contact recreation seasons.
USGS water records preserve another modern trace of the creek. The U.S. Geological Survey’s Water Data for the Nation lists station USGS 03277437 as Breeding Creek Near Isom, Kentucky. Even when the older post office and school names fade, the creek remains in federal hydrology records as a monitored water feature.
What Breeding Creek’s Records Tell Us
Breeding Creek is not easy to write about as a single town because it was never just one thing. It was a stream. It was a school name. It was part of Redfox. It emptied into the Cody area. It was tied to Carr Fork and later to Carr Creek Lake. Its historical record runs through maps, drainage tables, post offices, desegregation cases, archaeological surveys, coal permits, water quality reports, cemeteries, and family memory.
That scattered record is exactly why Breeding Creek matters. Small Appalachian places often survive in fragments rather than in one official town history. Here, those fragments show a farming hollow tied to an integrated Redfox community, a school at the center of a federal desegregation case, a vanished Cody landscape changed by a reservoir, and a creek still watched through the language of water data, mining, and environmental regulation.
Sources & Further Reading
Kentucky.gov. “Knott County.” Commonwealth of Kentucky. https://kentucky.gov/government/Pages/AgencyProfile.aspx?Title=Knott+County
U.S. Geological Survey. “Drainage Areas of Streams at Selected Locations in Kentucky.” Open-File Report 81-61. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1981. https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1981/ofr8161/pdf/ofr_81-61_b.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Maps: Preserving the Past.” National Geospatial Program. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past
U.S. Geological Survey. “Blackey Quadrangle, Kentucky, 1954.” Historical Topographic Map Collection. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
Waldrop, Henry A. “Geologic Map of the Blackey Quadrangle, Letcher and Knott Counties, Kentucky.” Geologic Quadrangle 1322. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1976. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/geologic-map-blackey-quadrangle-letcher-and-knott-counties-kentucky
U.S. Geological Survey. “Monitoring Location USGS 03277437, Breeding Creek Near Isom, KY.” Water Data for the Nation. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/03277437/
U.S. Geological Survey. “Statistics for Breeding Creek Near Isom, KY.” Water Data for the Nation. https://staging.waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/USGS-03277437/statistics/
McClain, D. L., and others. “Water Resources Data, Kentucky, Water Year 1998.” Water-Data Report KY-98-1. Louisville, KY: U.S. Geological Survey, 1999. https://pubs.usgs.gov/wdr/WDR-KY-98-1/pdf/wdr_ky-98-1_h.pdf
Kentucky Division of Water. Final Carr Fork Watershed Bacteria TMDL. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, June 2013. https://eec.ky.gov/Environmental-Protection/Water/Protection/TMDL/Approved%20TMDLs/TMDL-CarrForkEcoli.pdf
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville District. “Carr Creek Lake.” https://www.lrd.usace.army.mil/Mission/Projects/Article/3641111/carr-creek-lake/
Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “Carr Creek Lake WMA.” https://app.fw.ky.gov/Public_Lands_Search/detail.aspx?Kdfwr_id=131
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “Redfox, Kentucky.” https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-redfox.html
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “Cody, Kentucky.” https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-cody.html
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “Carr Creek, Kentucky.” https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-carr-creek.html
Rennick, Robert M. “Knott County, Post Offices.” Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1235&context=kentucky_county_histories
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813126319/kentucky-place-names/
Kentucky Department of Education. Kentucky Public School Directory, 1955 to 1956. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Department of Education, 1955. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000553502
Notable Kentucky African Americans Database. “African American Schools in Knott County, KY.” University of Kentucky Libraries. https://nkaa.uky.edu/nkaa/items/show/2871
Southern School News. “Kentucky.” September 1, 1963. Georgia Historic Newspapers. https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn59049440/1963-09-01/ed-1/seq-15/
Southern School News. “Litigation Summary: Rimbert v. Knott County Board of Education.” Southern Education Reporting Service. https://scdl.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/api/collection/p16821coll22/id/1946/download
Hand, Robert B. “An Archaeological Survey of a Proposed Coal Mine Operation Along Breeding Creek in Knott County, Kentucky.” Abstract in Kentucky Archaeology 9, no. 2, Winter 2002. https://kyopa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Volume-9-Number-2-Winter-2002.pdf
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. “H & D Coal Co. Inc. Mountaintop Removal Mine at Red Fox.” Photograph and permit lead, October 2009. https://www.flickr.com/photos/kftcphotos/4043819721
Francis, Arlena Collins. “Knott, My Beloved.” RootsWeb transcription. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~kyperry3/Knott_My_Beloved.htm
Stamper, James W. Stamper, James W.: Volume 1. Morehead State University ScholarWorks. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/context/ccpl_genealogy/article/1052/viewcontent/Stamper__James_W.___Volume_1.pdf
Stamper, Owen. Descendants of James Stamper, 1750–1826. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 1945. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1102&context=ccpl_genealogy
Lowe, S. J. Descendants of James Stamper: Carter County, Kentucky. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 1996. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1101&context=ccpl_genealogy
FamilySearch. “Eastern Kentucky Stamper Kin: Some Descendants of James, Jonathan and Joel Stamper.” FamilySearch Catalog. https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog/1002250
Find a Grave. “Elisha Breeding.” Memorial no. 198651872. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/198651872/elisha-breeding
KyGenWeb. “Death Certificate: John Breeding, Knott County, Kentucky.” https://kygenweb.net/knott/records/death_certificates/b_death_certificates/breeding_john.htm
FamilySearch. “Knott County, Kentucky Genealogy.” FamilySearch Research Wiki. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Knott_County,_Kentucky_Genealogy
The Digital Archaeological Record. “An Archaeological Survey of a Proposed Coal Mine Operation Along Breeding Creek in Knott County, Kentucky.” https://core.tdar.org/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Knott, Kentucky.” https://www.arc.gov/states_counties/knott/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Author Note: Breeding Creek is the kind of Appalachian place that survives through maps, school records, post office notes, family memory, and the names of nearby communities. I wanted to pull those fragments together because Knott County’s small creeks and hollows often carry more history than a single town name can hold.