Appalachian Community Histories – Cotula, Campbell County: Gatliff, the L&N Railroad, and a Coal Camp Remembered
Cotula sits in the northern part of Campbell County, in a landscape where the road, the railroad, the mountain, and the coal seam all helped shape local memory. It was never a large incorporated town, but it belonged to the same industrial world that made places like LaFollette, Habersham, Wynn, Chaska, and Jellico part of a larger coal and railroad corridor in Appalachian Tennessee.
The strongest local place-name account says Cotula was first known as Gatliff, named in honor of Dr. A. Gatliff, a prominent physician of the locality. That older name matters because it points to the period before Cotula became fixed in local memory under its later name. Federal post office lists also preserve Gatliff as a Campbell County post office from 1903 to 1916, showing that the older name was not just a passing reference.
By the early twentieth century, however, Cotula had become the name most associated with the settlement. The 1939 place-name sketch by Della Yoe, based on information from Evan Thornton, postmaster at Cotula, says the name was created in 1908 when the railroad was built through the section. According to that account, Cotula was made by combining two letters from three Louisville and Nashville Railroad stations: Chaska, LaFollette, and Louisville.
That story gives Cotula one of the more unusual place-name origins in Campbell County. The name was not taken from a creek, a family cemetery, a natural feature, or an early settler. It was a railroad-era name, built out of other railroad names, attached to a community whose life depended heavily on coal.
From Gatliff to Cotula
The Gatliff name places the community in the years when northern Campbell County was changing from a rural mountain landscape into a coal and timber district. The local place-name sketch says the Gatliff Coal Company opened a mine and built a camp about 1900. That date fits the larger pattern of Campbell County’s coal boom, when rail access made it possible for companies to move coal out of mountain hollows and into wider industrial markets.
The Gatliff name also reaches beyond a single place label. Berea College Special Collections holds the Chester Young Collection on Ancil Gatliff and family, which documents Dr. Ancil Gatliff, a physician, philanthropist, and businessman whose life and business interests touched the coal economy. That collection is useful because it gives researchers a way to follow the Gatliff name beyond local memory and into archival records.
For Cotula itself, the exact land and business trail still needs deeds, tax books, company records, and court records to complete the story. Campbell County records may show how land changed hands, how mineral rights were arranged, and how the Gatliff and Wynn interests connected to the community. The place-name sketch gives the outline. The courthouse records would help fill in the legal structure behind it.
The Railroad and the New Name
Cotula’s story cannot be separated from the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. The 1939 place-name sketch describes Cotula as a village served by the L&N Railroad and U.S. 25W, located about nine miles north of LaFollette and about forty-three miles north and west of Knoxville. That location placed it on a transportation line that mattered more than almost anything else to a coal camp.
Before the railroad, coal in the mountains could be known, used locally, and sometimes prospected, but it could not easily support a large camp economy. After rail service reached the section, mines could send coal to market, companies could build camps, and workers could live near the seams they entered each day. Roads mattered, but railroads gave coal towns their industrial reach.
G. L. Ridenour’s local history, in the section titled “Coal Is Run at Cotula,” gives that transformation a narrative form. He wrote that after the railroad was built through the mountains to LaFollette, Dr. A. Gatliff, at Gatliff, now Cotula, began running coal. In the same account, Henry Wynn, a Welsh miner, had prospected through the mountains during the Middlesboro promotion and later built the Wynn camp on Davis Creek.
That connection between Gatliff, Cotula, Wynn, Davis Creek, and the railroad is important. It shows Cotula not as an isolated camp, but as one part of a connected mining landscape. Men moved through it. Companies changed hands. Camps grew around coal seams. Churches, schools, roads, and post offices followed the work.
Coal Beneath Cotula
The most detailed federal evidence for Cotula’s mining landscape comes from the U.S. Geological Survey’s 1916 Bulletin 621-P, “Analyses of Coal Samples from Various Parts of the United States.” In 1915, the survey recorded bituminous coal samples from mines around Cotula. These were not later memories or general descriptions. They were technical field records made as part of federal coal analysis.
One sample came from the Southern drift mine of the Southern Coal & Coke Company, located 2,000 feet west of Cotula on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. The report identified the coal bed as the Jordan bed, with the rock assigned to the Wartburg sandstone of Pennsylvanian age. It noted shale as the roof and clay as the floor, and recorded a March 27, 1915 sample cut by F. R. Clark.
Another set of samples came from the Wynn drift mine of the Wynn Coal Company, one mile south of Cotula on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. The report identified the coal bed as Rich Mountain, with the rock assigned to the Briceville shale. Again the roof was shale and the floor was clay. The field notes recorded where the samples were cut inside the mine and gave the measured coal sections at the sample points.
These details matter because they make Cotula visible underground. The community was not only a name on a map or a memory in a local sketch. It was a place where named companies operated drift mines, where federal geologists measured coal beds, and where the L&N line tied the mine mouth to the outside market.
Henry Wynn and the Mining World Around Cotula
Henry Wynn appears in several parts of the Cotula story. Ridenour described him as a Welsh miner who had prospected through the mountains and built the Wynn camp on Davis Creek. The 1939 place-name sketch says the Wynn Coal Company later bought the Gatliff operation and built a larger camp. The USGS report places the Wynn Coal Company’s drift mine one mile south of Cotula in 1915.
A Tennessee State Library and Archives photograph adds a visual layer to this history. The catalog description identifies a work crew near empty dinkies at the entrance to the mine owned by Henry Wynn in Campbell County, dated 1910 to 1912. That image is one of the strongest surviving windows into Cotula’s coal-camp era because it places workers, equipment, mine infrastructure, and Wynn’s mining world together in one primary visual record.
The term “dinkies” points to the small mine cars or industrial equipment used around the mine. In a coal camp, these were part of the everyday machinery of work. Men entered the mine, coal came out, cars moved along the track, and the railroad beyond the camp carried the product away. The photograph cannot tell the whole story, but it gives the Cotula area a human scale that maps and technical reports alone cannot provide.
School, Church, and Camp Life
Cotula was not only a mine location. The 1939 place-name sketch described it as an unincorporated village with a population of about 300 in 1930. It had one graded school, and one church served Baptist and Methodist denominations. Those details show the basic institutions that helped turn a coal camp into a community.
The school mattered because coal camps were family places as well as work places. Children grew up near the mines, learned in local schoolrooms, and often lived in communities where the company, the church, the railroad, and the post office shaped ordinary routines. The church mattered for worship, but also for gathering, memory, funerals, visiting ministers, and the social life of a small mountain settlement.
Ridenour also connected the area to Wynne Memorial Church, built between Cotula and Wynn during the boom days of the coal industry. He wrote that the church was large enough to suggest the hopes people once had for the settlement’s growth. That detail is striking because it captures the optimism of coal-camp planning. A church built for a larger future can become a reminder of the future that did not fully arrive.
The Post Office Trail
Post office records help mark Cotula’s life on the federal map. Tennessee post office lists identify Gatliff in Campbell County as operating from 1903 to 1916. They also list Cotula in Campbell County as operating from 1920 to 1942. Those dates do not tell the whole story of the community, but they show when the federal postal system recognized those names.
This is useful because coal camps often changed faster than official records. A camp might be known locally by one name, by the company name, by the mine name, or by the post office name. A railroad timetable, a deed, a USGS report, a postmaster appointment, and a family death certificate might not all use the same name. Cotula and Gatliff should therefore be searched together.
For researchers, the National Archives postmaster appointment records and post office site location reports are especially important. They may identify postmasters, appointment dates, location descriptions, nearby roads, railroads, and changes in office status. The place-name sketch already gives Evan Thornton as postmaster in 1939, but the federal record series can help verify and extend the local account.
Timber, Rocks, Springs, and the Mountain Around the Camp
The 1939 place-name sketch also reminds us that Cotula’s history was not only underground. It says the area had an abundance of timber, and it named two points of interest: Chimney Rocks and Oven Springs. Chimney Rocks were described as natural rock formations resembling chimneys. Oven Springs was described as a spring on top of Cumberland Mountain under a rock that resembled an oven.
Those details are easy to overlook, but they matter. Coal-camp history can become so focused on production that the surrounding landscape disappears. Cotula stood in a mountain setting of timber, springs, roads, ridges, and natural formations. Families did not experience the place only through mine work. They knew the roads, the paths, the water sources, the churches, the school, the rocks, the woods, and the climb up Cumberland Mountain.
The timber reference also fits Campbell County’s wider industrial history. Coal and lumber often grew together. Mines needed timber, camps needed building material, and railroads opened access to both underground and surface resources. In Cotula, the coal seam and the forest were part of the same economic world.
Cotula in Campbell County Memory
Cotula belongs to the history of Campbell County’s coal corridor. The Tennessee Encyclopedia’s county history explains that railroad development helped shift Campbell County from subsistence farming toward coal mining and lumber production. Cotula was one of the smaller places shaped by that larger change.
It was not LaFollette, Jellico, or Jacksboro. It did not become a major town. But its records show the pattern clearly. The community began under the Gatliff name, became tied to the L&N Railroad, grew around coal camps, appeared in federal mining records, supported a school and church, operated a post office, and left behind names that still matter in maps, archives, and family history.
The clearest lesson from Cotula is that small places often require several kinds of records. A place-name sketch gives the memory. A post office list gives the dates. A USGS bulletin gives the mine. A photograph gives the workers and equipment. A local history gives the narrative. County deeds and court records may give the land and business transactions. No single source is enough by itself, but together they make the community visible again.
Cotula’s history is the history of a place made by coal, rail, work, and mountain geography. The name may have been manufactured from railroad stations, but the community itself was not artificial. It was made by miners, families, postmasters, teachers, church members, company men, timber workers, and the landscape around them.
Today, Cotula is best remembered by following the older names as well as the newer one. Search Cotula, but search Gatliff too. Search Wynn, Davis Creek, Chaska, Habersham, and LaFollette. In Appalachian records, a small place often survives not in one document, but in the overlap between many of them.
Sources & Further Reading
Campbell, Marius R., and Frank R. Clark. “Analyses of Coal Samples from Various Parts of the United States.” In Contributions to Economic Geology, 1915, Part II: Mineral Fuels, U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 621-P. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1916. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/b621
Campbell, Marius R., and David White. Contributions to Economic Geology, 1915, Part II: Mineral Fuels. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 621. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1916. https://doi.org/10.3133/b621
Yoe, Della. “Cotula.” In “Campbell County Place Names.” Tennessee GenWeb, May 12, 1939. Authority credited to Evan Thornton, postmaster, Cotula, Tennessee. https://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist-bogan/placenames.html
Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Work Crew Near the Empty Dinkies at the Entrance to the Mine Owned by Henry Wynn.” Looking Back at Tennessee Photograph Collection, 1910–1912. https://tnsos.org/tsla/imagesearch/citation.php?ImageID=6699
Tennessee State Library and Archives. Tennessee Place Names and Post Offices. Entries for Gatliff and Cotula, Campbell County. https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/history/places/postoff.htm
Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Tennessee Place Names and Post Offices: A–C.” Entry for Cotula, Campbell County. https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/history/places/postoff1.htm
National Archives. “Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971.” https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
National Archives. “Post Office Records.” https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
National Archives. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
Berea College Special Collections and Archives. Chester Young Collection on Ancil Gatliff and Family. BCA 0080-SAA 080. https://bereaarchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/resources/631
Ridenour, G. L. “Coal Is Run at Cotula.” In The Land of the Lake. Reprinted by Dallas Bogan with permission from the Campbell County Historical Society. https://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist-bogan/landoftheLake2.html
Baird, Adrion, and Lanier DeVours. “Campbell County.” Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, March 1, 2018. https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/campbell-county/
U.S. Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
U.S. Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System: Domestic Names Search.” https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/search/names
U.S. Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Maps: Preserving the Past.” https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past
U.S. Geological Survey. “topoView.” https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
U.S. Geological Survey. US Topo 7.5-Minute Map for La Follette, Tennessee. 2016. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/PDF/TN/TN_La_Follette_20160411_TM_geo.pdf
FamilySearch. “Campbell County, Tennessee Genealogy.” https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Campbell_County%2C_Tennessee_Genealogy
FamilySearch Catalog. Campbell County, Tennessee, USA: A History of Places, Faces, Happenings, Traditions and Things, Vol. 1. https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/records/item/444755-campbell-county-tennessee-usa-a-history-of-places-faces-happenings-traditions-and-things-vol-01
Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Genealogical Fact Sheets About Campbell County.” https://sos.tn.gov/tsla/pages/genealogical-fact-sheets-about-campbell-county
Tennessee Genealogical Society. “Campbell County, Tennessee.” Tennessee County Database. https://www.tngs.org/resources/Site/Custom_HTML_Files/TCD/County/Campbell.html
City of LaFollette. “History of LaFollette, Tennessee.” https://lafollettetn.gopowwow.co/about-lafollette/history-of-lafollette-tennessee
Author Note: Cotula is one of those Appalachian places that becomes clearer when you search the old name as well as the newer one. The Gatliff, Wynn, railroad, post office, and mining records show how much history can survive around a small coal-camp community.