Appalachian Community Histories – Colmar, Bell County: Yellow Creek, the L&N Railroad, and a Coal Camp Kept in the Records
Colmar is one of those Bell County places that can look small on a map but much larger in the records. It appears as a populated place on the Middlesboro North quadrangle, with its location fixed in the Yellow Creek country of Bell County. Modern map references place Colmar at about 36.66592 latitude and -83.65186 longitude, at an elevation near 1,066 feet. It sits in the same local world as Harbell, Balkan, Calvin, Varilla, and the roads that connect the Pineville and Middlesboro side of Bell County.
The name also appears in older sources with a spelling that researchers should not ignore. “Calmar” shows up in historic mining records, while “Colmar” became the spelling preserved in post-office records, federal mine records, road records, and modern maps. That variation matters because the community’s history is scattered across maps, mine inspections, postal studies, census descriptions, and local histories. A search for only one spelling can miss part of the story.
Colmar was not one of Bell County’s largest towns, but it belonged to the same industrial landscape that reshaped the county after the arrival of the railroad and the growth of coal mining. Its history can be followed through four main trails: settlement and family memory, the railroad and post office, early twentieth-century mine reports, and the later survival of the Colmar name in modern coal records.
Before the Coal Camp
The Colmar area was part of a settled mountain landscape before it became a coal camp name. Henry Harvey Fuson’s local history connects the Calmar and Colmar area to early Bell County families, especially the Robbins family. Fuson wrote that James M. Robbins came to the county in 1836 and settled about a mile from Calmar. He also placed Lemuel Robbins near Colmar and Colmar Ridge after his arrival in 1838. These references do not give a full community history, but they show that the name belonged to a known local place before the heaviest coal development gave it an industrial identity.
This is important for understanding Colmar. It was not simply a company label on a mine map. It was a neighborhood, a ridge, a road name, a post office, and a point of reference for families who lived along the creeks and hills north of Middlesboro and east of Pineville. The later coal camp grew from that older geography.
The Railroad and the Post Office
The strongest place-name source for Colmar is Robert M. Rennick’s study of Bell County post offices. Rennick’s post-office research says that after the railroad opened Colmar Station, Julius E. Adair established the Colmar post office on June 14, 1913. That detail places Colmar in the railroad age of Bell County, when station names, mail service, mining offices, and coal shipments helped turn rural neighborhoods into named industrial communities.
The railroad was central to Colmar’s rise. The 1920 Kentucky mine report placed Southern Mining Company’s operation on Yellow Creek at Calmar, Bell County, on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. A second mine entry from the same report placed another Southern Mining Company mine on Yellow Creek at Colmar, also on the L&N. In these records, the railroad was not background scenery. It was the reason coal from a hollow community could enter a regional and national market.
Colmar’s post office and station made it more than a point on a creek. They gave the place a name that could appear on letters, payrolls, mine reports, maps, and family records. That is why Colmar survives so clearly in government documents even when its local history is harder to gather from one single source.
Southern Mining Company and the Amru Mine
The most detailed early primary source for Colmar’s coal history is the 1920 Annual Report of the Kentucky Department of Mines. That report identifies Southern Mining Company with its main office at Williamsburg and its mine office at Colmar. It describes the company’s Amru Mine on Yellow Creek at Calmar, Bell County, on the L&N Railroad. The mine was inspected on December 17, 1920, and the report described it as a drift mine working the Marion seam. The coal was listed at about 38 inches, with a slate and sandstone roof, fire clay bottom, fan ventilation, mining machines, and a daily capacity of 500 tons.
The same report recorded another Southern Mining Company mine on Yellow Creek at Colmar. That operation was inspected on December 20, 1920, and the state report described it as a drift mine working the Mason seam. The coal was listed at 49 inches, with a slate roof, fire clay bottom, fan ventilation, and mule haulage to the side track. The difference between the Marion and Mason seam entries shows how Colmar’s coal history was tied to a layered mountain landscape rather than to a single mine opening.
Those details matter because they move Colmar from memory into working history. The state mine report tells us what kind of mine it was, what seam was being worked, how coal was moved, how air was supplied, and how the mine connected to the railroad. It also shows why the spelling issue matters. In one place the report used Calmar, and in another it used Colmar. A careful history of the community should preserve both spellings when searching the record.
Roads, Census Lines, and Community Geography
By 1940, Colmar was visible in federal census geography. The National Archives’ 1940 enumeration district descriptions for Bell County include Colmar Road, Colmar-Harbell Road, State Highway 188, and “Colmar (part), Varilla” in Magisterial District 7. These descriptions are useful because they show how the federal government understood the area on the ground. Colmar was not only a mine name. It was a road, a community boundary, and a populated place included in the census landscape.
Road records and highway maps also help place Colmar among neighboring Bell County communities. Kentucky transportation planning maps list Colmar in the same county network as Calvin, Balkan, Chenoa, Varilla, Harbell, and Yellow Creek. This reinforces what the census descriptions show. Colmar belonged to a chain of Bell County places connected by creeks, roads, rail lines, and coal work.
The geography also helps explain why Colmar can be difficult to research. Some communities leave behind a courthouse, a town hall, or a long run of newspaper stories under one name. Colmar’s record is more scattered. It appears in pieces: a road here, a railroad station there, a mine report, a post-office entry, a school reference, a family settlement note, and later a federal mine fatality report.
School, Work, and the Company Camp Economy
Colmar’s community life can be glimpsed through school and material-culture records. Fuson’s Bell County history includes a Colmar school-related reference, listing Birdie Gatman of Colmar, Kentucky, among Bell County school entries. It is a small detail, but it points to Colmar as a lived community, not just a mine portal or a station stop.
The company-store economy also appears in surviving Southern Mining Company artifacts. TokenCatalog lists a Southern Mining Company token from Colmar marked for trade, and Eastern Kentucky University’s digital collections identify a Southern Mining Company coal scrip coin from Colmar. These are not broad histories by themselves, but they are useful evidence of the coal-camp economy. Scrip and trade tokens connected miners and their families to the company store system that shaped daily life in many coal communities across eastern Kentucky.
Together, the school reference and scrip records help round out Colmar’s history. The place was not only a production site. It had families, children, teachers, stores, roads, and the everyday rhythms of a coal community.
Colmar and the Asher Coal Network
Colmar also appears in the broader industrial story of Bell County coal. Fuson described how the arrival of the railroad in 1888 changed the county’s economic life. He connected the growth of coal to the development of the Yellow Creek Valley, Clear Fork, Bennett Fork, and other nearby areas. In his account of T. J. Asher and the Asher Coal Mining Company, Fuson listed company properties at Colmar, Varilla, and Tejay in Bell County, along with operations in Harlan County.
This connection places Colmar inside a larger coal network rather than as an isolated camp. The same men, companies, leases, rail connections, and seams often tied several communities together. A later court case involving Asher Coal Mining Company also refers to a 1959 “Colmar Lease” covering about 4,300 acres, showing that the Colmar name continued to be used in coal land and lease records long after the early Southern Mining Company period.
That long paper trail is one reason Colmar is historically useful. It helps connect early family settlement, the railroad era, Southern Mining Company operations, Asher coal lands, and later mining activity under the same local place name.
The Postwar Colmar Mine
Colmar’s coal history did not end with the early twentieth-century camp period. Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company’s corporate history says the company explored coal lands in Bell County in 1952 and then began a new mine named Colmar for the nearby town by the end of 1953. By 1955, the Colmar strip operation was producing more than 140,000 tons annually. The same account says the operation employed 35 men, used large stripping equipment, and worked coal from the Hance and Mason seams.
This postwar development shows how Colmar’s name moved from railroad camp and drift mine records into the era of larger surface operations. It also shows how the town name could outlast one company. Southern Mining Company, Asher Coal Mining Company, Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company, and later operators all belong to different chapters of the same coalfield geography.
The geology beneath Colmar helps explain that continuity. The United States Geological Survey’s geologic map of the Middlesboro North Quadrangle covers the Colmar area and was prepared by Charles L. Rice and Russell G. Ping as a USGS Open-File Report. Such maps are useful for understanding the seams, ridges, drainage, and structure that made this part of Bell County valuable to coal operators.
Colmar in the Modern Mining Record
The Colmar name remained in official mining records into the twenty-first century. Kentucky’s 2021 mining annual report listed Nally & Hamilton Enterprises Inc. as operating the Colmar surface mine at Colmar in Bell County. The report recorded 56,285 tons of production, 21 employees, 137 days worked, and one reportable accident for that year.
In January 2022, Colmar entered the record again through tragedy. The Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet reported that a 32-year-old miner was killed at the Colmar mine in Bell County, owned by Nally & Hamilton Enterprises Inc. MSHA’s final report identified the mine as Colmar, located in Calvin, Bell County, and reported that Cecil Collett died on January 11, 2022, when a tree fell from a highwall area and struck the pickup truck cab where he was working. MSHA found that the operator had not followed its ground control plan requiring trees to be removed a safe distance from the highwall and had not conducted adequate examinations.
That modern record gives Colmar’s history a sobering ending point, or at least a modern chapter. Coal communities are often remembered through production figures, company names, and maps, but their history is also a history of risk. The 2022 fatality report reminds us that the same landscape that created work also carried danger.
Why Colmar Matters
Colmar matters because it shows how a small Bell County community can be reconstructed from scattered evidence. A full history does not come from one source. It comes from putting together the USGS map, the post-office study, the 1920 mine report, census district descriptions, road maps, local histories, scrip records, company histories, court records, and modern mine safety reports.
Through those sources, Colmar becomes more than a name near Yellow Creek. It becomes a settlement area tied to early Bell County families, a railroad station with a post office, a coal camp with Southern Mining Company operations, a road and census district marker, a place connected to Asher coal lands, a postwar strip mine name, and a modern mine site remembered in official safety records.
Like many Appalachian coal communities, Colmar is easiest to miss when looking only for a town center. Its story lives in the roads, seams, ridges, family names, company records, and government reports that carried the name forward. For Bell County history, that makes Colmar a small place with a deep paper trail.
Sources & Further Reading
Kentucky. State Department of Mines. Annual Report of the State Department of Mines for the Year Ending December 31, 1920. Frankfort, KY: State Department of Mines, 1921. https://archive.org/stream/annualreport41deptgoog/annualreport41deptgoog_djvu.txt
Kentucky. State Department of Mines. Annual Report, 1924. Frankfort, KY: State Department of Mines, 1925. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1924.pdf
Kentucky. State Department of Mines. Alphabetical List of Coal Companies and Mines in Kentucky, by Counties, 1925. Frankfort, KY: State Department of Mines, 1926. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1925.pdf
Kentucky. State Department of Mines. The State Department of Mines, Annual Report, 1927. Frankfort, KY: State Department of Mines, 1928. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1927.pdf
Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet. “Annual Reports.” Division of Mine Safety. Accessed May 26, 2026. https://eec.ky.gov/Natural-Resources/Mining/Mine-Safety/safety-inspections-and-licensing/Pages/annual-reports.aspx
Kentucky Division of Mine Safety. Annual Report, 2021. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, 2022. https://eec.ky.gov/Natural-Resources/Mining/Mine-Safety/safety-inspections-and-licensing/Archived_Annual_Reports/2021%20Annual%20Report.pdf
Mine Safety and Health Administration. “January 11, 2022 Fatality, Final Report: Colmar Mine, Nally & Hamilton Enterprises Inc.” U.S. Department of Labor. https://www.msha.gov/data-reports/fatality-reports/2022/january-11-2022-fatality/final-report
Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet. “Mine Fatality in Bell County.” Naturally Connected, January 12, 2022. https://kydep.wordpress.com/2022/01/12/mine-fatality-in-bell-county/
Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission. Secretary of Labor v. Nally & Hamilton Enterprises Inc., KENT 2022-0079 et al., April 8, 2024. https://www.fmshrc.gov/sites/default/files/decisions/alj/ALJd_4082024-KENT%202022-0079%2C%20et%20al.pdf
Rennick, Robert M. “Bell County: Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/383/
Rennick, Robert M. “Bell County: Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection. Morehead State University, 2016. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/34/
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Bell County, Kentucky.” La Posta: A Journal of American Postal History 38, no. 1. https://www.lapostapub.com/Backissues/LP38-1.pdf
United States National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Enumeration District Descriptions, Kentucky, Bell County, ED 7-26 through ED 7-30.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1940_Census_Enumeration_District_Descriptions_-_Kentucky_-_Bell_County_-_ED_7-26,_ED_7-27,_ED_7-28,_ED_7-29,_ED_7-30_-_NARA_-_5862280.jpg
United States Geological Survey. “Colmar, Kentucky.” GNIS-derived topographic entry, TopoZone. https://www.topozone.com/kentucky/bell-ky/city/colmar-2/
United States Geological Survey. Rice, Charles L., and Russell G. Ping. Geologic Map of the Middlesboro North Quadrangle, Bell County, Kentucky. USGS Open-File Report 87-413, 1987. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/geologic-map-middlesboro-north-quadrangle-bell-county-kentucky-0
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Bell County Six-Year Highway Plan Map. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. https://transportation.ky.gov/Program-Management/Six%20Year%20Plan%20Maps/bell.pdf
Fuson, Henry Harvey. History of Bell County, Kentucky. Vol. 1. Louisville, KY: Hobson Press, 1947. https://kygenweb.net/bell/area/bell_history1.htm
Fuson, Henry Harvey. History of Bell County, Kentucky. Vol. 2. Louisville, KY: Hobson Press, 1947. https://kygenweb.net/bell/area/bell_history2.htm
Fuson, Henry Harvey. History of Bell County, Kentucky, school and church chapters. KyGenWeb transcript. https://kygenweb.net/bell/books/History_Bell_1/Chapter_XIV_XV.htm
Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company: The First One Hundred Years. Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company, 1981. https://archive.org/stream/rochester00coop/rochester00coop_djvu.txt
Indiana University of Pennsylvania Special Collections and University Archives. “Guide to the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company Records.” https://libweb1.library.iup.edu/depts/speccol/ead/mg51.html
Asher Coal Mining Company v. Asher Coal Mining Company, 417 S.W.2d 249. Kentucky Court of Appeals, 1967. https://law.justia.com/cases/kentucky/court-of-appeals/1967/417-s-w-2d-249-1.html
RootsWeb. “Coal Mines in Bell County Kentucky.” KY Coal Mining Genealogy. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~kycoalmi/bellcomines.html
TokenCatalog. “Southern Mining Company, Colmar, Kentucky, Trade Token.” https://www.tokencatalog.com/token_record_forms.php?action=DisplayTokenRecord&attribution_id=372258&inventory_id=348474&td_id=363764
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Tracing Your Kentucky Coal Mining Ancestors.” University of Kentucky. https://kygs.org/eastern-ky-coal-mining-records/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Kentucky.” Accessed May 26, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-states/kentucky/
Author Note: Colmar is one of those Bell County places that shows how much history can survive in maps, mine reports, road names, and post-office records. I hope this article helps preserve a small Yellow Creek community that deserves to be easier for local families and researchers to find.