Appalachian Community Histories – Clinchmore, Campbell County: Stony Fork, the Clinchmore Mine, and the Flood of 1965
Clinchmore began in the narrow mountain country of southern Campbell County, where Stony Fork and the small branches around it cut through steep ground before joining the larger New River drainage. It was never a large incorporated town. It was a coal community, tied to a mine, a railroad spur, a school, a church, a commissary, and the families who made a life in a valley shaped by work.
The name itself points to that beginning. A 1939 Campbell County place-name account says Clinchmore took its name from the Clinchmore Mining Company and that the settlement began with the opening of the company’s coal mine in 1929. The same account placed the village on a short spur of the Tennessee Railroad in the southern part of Campbell County, about sixty miles north of Knoxville. Coal mining was described as its only industry. The community had a graded school, a Baptist church, and an estimated population of about 400.
That description catches Clinchmore at a particular moment. By 1939 it was no longer just a new mine camp. It had become a place with families, children, church life, school days, company routines, railroad traffic, and local memory. Yet its history was still closely tied to the company that created it.
The Mine That Made the Place
Clinchmore’s origin belongs to the late 1920s, when coal still shaped the economy of much of northeastern Tennessee. Campbell County already had older coal stories in places such as Coal Creek, Jellico, LaFollette, and the valleys around New River. Clinchmore came later than some of those better known districts, but its pattern was familiar. A mine opened. A rail connection made shipment possible. Houses and community institutions followed.
State mining records are some of the most important sources for understanding this period. Tennessee Department of Labor materials at the Tennessee State Library and Archives include records for Clinchmore Coal Mines from 1928 to 1944 and Clinchmore Mine from 1930 to 1940. Those files are the kind of records that may hold inspection material, correspondence, mine oversight, safety concerns, operator information, and other details that do not always survive in local memory.
The state’s annual mining reports also place Clinchmore inside Tennessee’s larger coal industry. The 1930 Annual Report of the Mineral Resources of Tennessee included tables of coal mine operators, superintendents, inside foremen, annual output, and product value. These reports were not written as local history, but they are valuable because they show how the state measured coal production and mine operation. In a place like Clinchmore, where the mine gave the community its reason for being, those official tables help turn a name on a map into an industrial settlement.
The records also show that Clinchmore was not only a place of work, but a place of company power. Coal scrip from the Clinchmore Coal Mining Company survives in the Arthur Kilgore Mine Scrip Collection at Morehead State University. A piece of scrip is a small object, but it carries a large story. In many coal towns, scrip connected miners and their families to the company store and to the economic world controlled by the operator. Even when used for everyday purchases, it reminds us that the company town was not just a workplace. It was a system.
The Tennessee Railroad Spur
The railroad was as important to Clinchmore as the mine itself. The 1939 place-name account described Clinchmore as being located on a spur of the Tennessee Railroad, a short line that connected the mountain coal country with outside markets. Later railroad histories and federal transportation records also describe a Clinchmore branch that served mining operations along Stony Fork.
That spur gave Clinchmore a connection to the wider coal economy. Coal dug from the mountains needed a way out. The railroad carried that coal from a narrow valley into the commercial world beyond Campbell County. It also helped define the geography of the place. Houses, roads, the school, the church, the commissary, and the mine landscape were not scattered at random. They were arranged around the practical needs of a coal community built along creek bottoms, railroad grades, and company ground.
For the people who lived there, the railroad was more than an industrial feature. It was part of the sound and rhythm of the valley. The rails marked movement, shipment, supply, and connection. Clinchmore may have sat in steep and relatively remote country, but it was not isolated from the systems that shaped Appalachian coal towns across the region.
A Community of Families
The surviving records allow Clinchmore to be seen not only as a company operation, but as a community. Census records, post office references, school memories, church memories, cemetery records, and oral histories all help fill in the human side.
The 1940 census enumeration district descriptions for Campbell County placed Clinchmore with Civil District 6, Beech Fork, and nearby communities. That matters because it points researchers toward the people who lived there during the camp’s active years. In the population schedules, Clinchmore can be studied family by family. Miners, laborers, foremen, merchants, teachers, children, boarders, widows, and railroad workers may all appear there. Their names can show where families came from, how households were arranged, and how the coal economy shaped ordinary life.
The 1939 account also tells us that Clinchmore had a graded school and a Baptist church. Those two institutions are important. A company town was never just a mine mouth and a payroll. Children walked to school. Families gathered for worship. Neighbors visited. People married, buried their dead, moved away, came back, and remembered the hollows by older names that often outlasted the official ones.
Local memory preserves names and places that do not always appear clearly in official documents. Accounts connected to Clinchmore remember areas such as Rabbit Town, Flea Town, Appalaca Camp, and Paint Rock Camp. They also remember the school, the church, the company commissary, the reservoir, the bath house, and the remains of mining and railroad structures. These memories should be checked against maps, mine records, and census schedules, but they are still part of the historical record. They show how residents understood Clinchmore as a lived place rather than only a coal property.
The Storm of July 24, 1965
The event that most sharply marked Clinchmore in public memory came on July 24, 1965. In the early morning hours, an intense rainstorm struck the rugged slopes near the Anderson and Campbell County line. The United States Geological Survey later reported that the most intense part of the storm covered about twenty-five square miles along the divide between the Cumberland River and Tennessee River basins. There were no rain gauges in the area of greatest rainfall, but a Tennessee Valley Authority bucket survey indicated rainfall amounts above twelve inches, most of it falling within about three hours.
The streams in the storm area were small, steep headwater streams. That made the flood especially dangerous. A narrow valley can seem safe when the creek is low, but water moving off steep slopes can rise with little warning. The USGS report said the hardest hit streams were Stony Fork and Graves Gap Branch. On Stony Fork above Clinchmore, local information gathered by TVA indicated that the water rose about ten feet in fifteen minutes.
That sudden rise turned the valley into a place of destruction. The USGS reported that almost everything in the narrow valleys was damaged. Bridges were washed away. Roads were damaged by washouts and debris. Automobiles were demolished. Several houses were swept away or knocked from their foundations. Five people drowned near Clinchmore when their house and several others were carried off by the flood.
The railroad and the county road that followed Stony Fork up to Clinchmore were completely destroyed. That detail is important because it shows how the flood attacked the very lines that had held the community together. The road, the rail line, the creek, and the mine landscape all occupied the narrow bottom. When the water came through, it struck the heart of the settlement.
Memory After the Water
The 1965 flood did not erase Clinchmore from memory, but it changed how the place was remembered. Later footage preserved by Media Burn Archive from the Appalshop Collection records residents walking through the area and describing what had been there before the water came. They pointed out former house sites, the former church house, the former school, and places where people died. The footage also shows how residents connected the flood to a larger story of mining, land use, and environmental damage in the Cumberland Mountains.
Those recollections matter because they preserve a community after many of its physical markers had disappeared. A person passing through later might see woods, creek beds, a road trace, or scattered remains. Former residents saw something else. They remembered where families lived, where children went to school, where church services were held, where bridges crossed, and where the floodwater changed the course of the creek.
In that way, Clinchmore became one of those Appalachian places that exists in layers. There is the official place-name record. There are the mine records. There are the railroad records. There are maps and federal reports. There are pieces of company scrip. There are census pages full of names. Then there are memories carried by people who knew the valley before the flood and could still point to what had been there.
Clinchmore in the Records
Clinchmore’s history is unusually well documented for a small coal settlement, but the records are scattered. The Tennessee Department of Labor files can help explain the mine. State mining reports can show operators, production, and industry context. Federal court records involving Clinchmore Coal Mining Company can show the company’s finances and tax disputes during the Depression and early 1940s. Federal Register entries can place the company inside wartime coal regulation. Census records can restore the names of residents. Maps can show the railroad spur, streams, schools, and mine features. Oral histories can show what the place meant to the people who lived there.
Together, those sources tell a story that is both local and regional. Clinchmore was not the largest coal town in Campbell County, and it was not the oldest. Yet it shows how a company mine could create a settlement almost overnight, how a railroad spur could tie a remote valley to the coal market, and how a flood could reshape a community’s future in a single morning.
Remembering Clinchmore
Clinchmore should be remembered as more than a vanished coal camp or a flood site. It was a working community in southern Campbell County, born from the Clinchmore Mining Company mine, connected by the Tennessee Railroad, and carried in the memories of the families who lived along Stony Fork.
Its story belongs to the broader history of Appalachian coal towns, but it also has its own shape. The mine brought people there. The railroad connected them to the outside world. The school and church gave the settlement community life. The 1965 flood marked the place with loss and survival. The records that remain allow Clinchmore to be reconstructed, not as a legend, but as a real community that once stood in a narrow mountain valley and left its name in the history of Campbell County.
Sources & Further Reading
R. R. Humphries. “Clinchmore.” In “Campbell County Place Names,” based on information from Myrtle E. DeLaney, Clinchmore postmaster, April 27, 1939. TNGenWeb. https://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist-bogan/placenames.html
Tennessee Department of Labor. Tennessee Department of Labor Records, 1878–1974. Tennessee State Library and Archives. https://sos-tn-gov-files.tnsosfiles.com/forms/DEPARTMENT_OF_LABOR_RECORDS_1878-1974.pdf
Tennessee Department of Labor, Division of Mines. Annual Report of the Mineral Resources of Tennessee. Nashville: Tennessee Department of Labor, 1930. https://books.google.com
Clinchmore Coal Mining Company. “Clinchmore Coal Mining Company.” Arthur Kilgore Mine Scrip Collection, Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kilgore_scrip_collection/25/
Morehead State University. Arthur Kilgore Mine Scrip Collection. Morehead State University Digital Archives. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kilgore_scrip_collection/
Clinchmore Coal Mining Co. v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 143 F.2d 112. United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 1944. https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914a236add7b049346950ae
United States Government Printing Office. United States Government Publications Monthly Catalog. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1944. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-GP3-b35bf161bc795ead3ff6578f320cc43a/pdf/GOVPUB-GP3-b35bf161bc795ead3ff6578f320cc43a.pdf
United States Office of Price Administration. Federal Register, June 16, 1945. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1945-06-16/pdf/FR-1945-06-16.pdf
Rostvedt, J. O., and others. Summary of Floods in the United States During 1965. U.S. Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper 1850-E. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970. https://pubs.usgs.gov/wsp/1850e/report.pdf
Tennessee Valley Authority. Storm and Flood of July 24, 1965, in Vicinity of Clinchmore, Tennessee. Knoxville: Tennessee Valley Authority, 1965. Cited in USGS Water-Supply Paper 1850-E. https://pubs.usgs.gov/wsp/1850e/report.pdf
Environmental Science Services Administration, Weather Bureau. Storm Data and Unusual Weather Phenomena, Vol. 7, No. 7, July 1965. Asheville, NC: National Climatic Data Center, 1965. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/swdi/stormevents/pub-pdf/storm_1965_07.pdf
United Press International. “East Tennessee Flood Claims 5.” Kingsport Times-News, July 25, 1965. https://www.usdeadlyevents.com/1965-july-24-heavy-rain-and-flash-flooding-northeast-tn-esp-clinchmore-tn-7/
United Press International. “East Tennessee Flood Kills 7.” Kingsport Times, July 26, 1965. https://www.usdeadlyevents.com/1965-july-24-heavy-rain-and-flash-flooding-northeast-tn-esp-clinchmore-tn-7/
Media Burn Archive. “[Clinchmore Flood Pt 1].” Appalshop Collection. https://mediaburn.org/videos/clinchmore-flood-pt-1/
United States Geological Survey. TopoView. National Geologic Map Database. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
United States Geological Survey. “DUNCAN FLATS, TN Historical Map GeoPDF 7.5X7.5 Grid 24000-Scale 1947.” USGS Store. https://store.usgs.gov/product/909733
United States Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” U.S. Geological Survey. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
United States Geological Survey. “Download GNIS Data.” U.S. Board on Geographic Names. https://www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-geographic-names/download-gnis-data
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Enumeration District Descriptions, Tennessee, Campbell County, ED 7-20, ED 7-21.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1940_Census_Enumeration_District_Descriptions_-_Tennessee_-_Campbell_County_-_ED_7-20,_ED_7-21_-_NARA_-_5880793.jpg
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Geographic Finding Aids.” https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940/finding-aids
Englund, Kenneth J. Geology and Coal Resources of the Ivydell Quadrangle, Campbell County, Tennessee. U.S. Geological Survey Coal Map 40. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1958. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/coal40
Englund, Kenneth J. Geology and Coal Resources of the Pioneer Quadrangle, Scott and Campbell Counties, Tennessee. U.S. Geological Survey Coal Map 39. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1957. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/coal39
Glenn, L. C. The Northern Tennessee Coal Field, Included in Anderson, Campbell, Claiborne, Fentress, Morgan, Overton, Pickett, Roane, and Scott Counties. Tennessee Geological Survey Bulletin 33-B. Nashville: Tennessee Geological Survey, 1925. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Prodesc/proddesc_91780.htm
United States Geological Survey. “Collection of Coal Geology Maps from Tennessee.” ReSciColl. https://webapps.usgs.gov/rescicoll/collections.html?collection=4f4e4aaae4b07f02db669370&organization=4f4e4762e4b07f02db47dfee
United States Geological Survey. “Coal Related Tennessee Valley Authority Mine Maps and Records.” ReSciColl. https://webapps.usgs.gov/rescicoll/collections.html?collection=5016eff5e4b06fb5ce8b73e2&organization=4f4e4762e4b07f02db47dfee
Tennessee Geological Survey. “Data Preservation and Historical Document Collections.” Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. https://www.tn.gov/environment/program-areas/geology/historical-doc-collections.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Records of the U.S. Bureau of Mines.” Guide to Federal Records, Record Group 70. https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/070.html
Garrett, Ben. “The Tennessee Railroad.” Encyclopedia of Scott County. July 29, 2025. Updated April 25, 2026. https://ihoneida.com/knowledge-base/the-tennessee-railroad/
ARRts Archives. “Tennessee Railroad.” https://arrts-arrchives.com/TNRR.html
Surface Transportation Board, Office of Environmental Analysis. Environmental and rail corridor records concerning the Tennessee Railroad and Clinchmore Mine area. https://www.stb.gov
Carroll, Richard. “About Clinchmore.” Clinchmore. https://rccarroll9.wixsite.com/clinchmore/about-clinchmore
Carroll, Richard. “Home.” Clinchmore. https://rccarroll9.wixsite.com/clinchmore
E. Ray Austin Collection. “0193, July 24, 1965, the Clinchmore Flood.” Fotki. https://public.fotki.com/ERayA/oldtimpho/cm/clinch2/clinchmore-6.html
Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Campbell County.” Tennessee County Fact Sheets. https://sos.tn.gov/tsla
FamilySearch. “Campbell County, Tennessee Genealogy.” FamilySearch Research Wiki. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Campbell_County,_Tennessee_Genealogy
Author Note: Clinchmore is one of those Appalachian places where a small community left a large paper trail through mine records, maps, flood reports, and memory. I wanted this article to treat it as more than a vanished coal camp, because families built a real life along Stony Fork before the flood changed the valley.