Appalachian Community Histories – Diablock, Perry County: A Perry County Coal Camp with a Lasting Name
Diablock is one of those eastern Kentucky communities that can be easy to miss in broad county histories but much easier to trace once you follow the right records. It was not a county seat or a large incorporated town. Instead, it appears most clearly through the kinds of sources that often preserve coal-camp history: postal records, mine reports, court cases, topographic maps, census tables, and local newspapers. Taken together, those records show Diablock as a Perry County coal community that grew out of the Diamond Block Coal Company and remained a recognized place long after its earliest company years.
A Coal Camp Named for the Company
The name Diablock itself points directly to its industrial beginnings. The Kentucky Atlas & Gazetteer states that the community was established by and named for the Diamond Block Coal Company and places it just south of Hazard in Perry County. Postal history helps fix that beginning in time. A La Posta study of Kentucky post offices reports that the Diablock post office opened on November 15, 1916, with William B. Haynes as postmaster. The Kentucky Atlas adds that the post office remained open until 1948. Those details strongly suggest that Diablock emerged not as an old crossroads settlement later touched by coal, but as a place whose very identity was tied to the coal economy from the start.
Diablock in the Mine Records
Once Diablock appears in the records, it keeps appearing in mining documents across the 1920s. Kentucky State Department of Mines annual reports for 1924, 1925, 1927, and 1928 all include Diablock in Perry County mine listings, showing that it belonged to the active coal geography of the county rather than being a one-season camp that vanished quickly. Compiled coal-camp reference lists are consistent with that picture. One widely used Perry County coal-camp list ties Diablock to Diamond Block Coal Company from 1916 to 1932 and to Fourseam Block Collieries Company from 1916 to 1923. An April 1933 issue of Mining and Metallurgy then noted that a company was preparing its mine at Diablock for operation after several months of inactivity. Even allowing for the gaps that always exist in coal-camp history, the record shows Diablock as a working mining place over a substantial span of years.
Labor, Law, and the Hard Edges of Coal Camp Life
The Diamond Block operation was important enough to leave a legal footprint as well. In 1920, Diamond Block Coal Co. v. United Mine Workers of America reached the Kentucky Court of Appeals. In 1925, Diamond Block Coal Co. v. Sparksdid the same. Those cases are valuable because they show that Diablock was not just a name attached to a mine opening on paper. It was part of the contested world of Appalachian coal, where labor organizing, employment arrangements, and the business of extraction could all end up in court. For a place as small as Diablock, that legal trail is one of the clearest signs that the camp stood inside the major tensions of the eastern Kentucky coalfield.
A Community on the Map
Diablock also became fixed in the landscape through mapping. The federal US Topo map for Hazard South names Diablock among the places in the quadrangle, and historic map vendors reproducing older USGS Hazard South sheets show Diablock on editions from the mid twentieth century as well, including 1954 and 1972 map versions. That matters because coal camps sometimes disappear from local memory faster than they disappear from the ground. The continued presence of Diablock on official and derived topographic mapping shows that it endured as a recognized settlement landscape, not merely as a mine ledger entry.
From Coal Camp to Census Place
The census record captures that later continuity especially well. The 2010 Census listed Diablock as a census-designated place with 453 residents and 215 housing units. Census geography files and Gazetteer data continue to identify Diablock as a CDP, with a land area of about 0.203 square miles and a small amount of water area, along with standardized federal identifiers and coordinates. In other words, even after the post office era and the early company era had passed, Diablock remained legible to the federal government as a distinct community on the ground. That gives the town a second life in the records. It began as a coal place, but it did not survive only as a coal memory.
Everyday Life Beyond the Company Name
What makes Diablock feel most like a lived community, rather than just an industrial site, is the way it surfaces in local and county-level sources. H. F. Randolph’s Perry County – General History listed Diablock among county communities and gave it a reported population of 300. The Hazard Herald archive also shows a dedicated “Diablock News” item in December 1942, a small but important clue that the place had its own stream of neighborhood happenings worth reporting. Scientific and geological sources reinforce that the area remained meaningful in later decades. A U.S. Geological Survey bulletin on Appalachian coals included a sample identified from a mine at Diablock, showing that the name still functioned as a usable field location in federal research. These traces are modest, but that is often how Appalachian community history survives: not in one grand narrative, but in the accumulation of ordinary mentions.
Why Diablock Still Matters
Diablock’s history is the history of many eastern Kentucky coal communities in miniature. It appears to have been created by industry, named for industry, and sustained by the work of miners and their families. Its post office opened in 1916, its mine activity is visible through state and trade records across the 1920s and into the 1930s, its labor tensions reached the courts, and its name remained on maps and in census geography long after the earliest company phase had passed. That makes Diablock more than a footnote. It is one of the many places that show how coal reshaped Perry County, leaving behind communities whose histories must be reconstructed from paper trails but are still very much recoverable.
Sources & Further Reading
U.S. Census Bureau. Kentucky: 2010, Summary Population and Housing Characteristics. 2010 Census of Population and Housing, CPH-1-19. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, 2012. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2012/dec/cph-1-19.pdf
U.S. Census Bureau. “2010 Census Gazetteer Files: Places, Kentucky.” 2010. https://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/maps-data/data/gazetteer/2010_place_list_21.txt
U.S. Geological Survey. Hazard South, Kentucky. US Topo 7.5-Minute Map. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 2016. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/PDF/KY/KY_Hazard_South_20160425_TM_geo.pdf
Kentucky Geological Survey. Annual Report of the State Department of Mines of Kentucky for the Year 1924. Lexington: Kentucky Geological Survey, 1924. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1924.pdf
Kentucky Geological Survey. Annual Report of the State Department of Mines of Kentucky for the Year 1925. Lexington: Kentucky Geological Survey, 1925. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1925.pdf
Kentucky Geological Survey. Annual Report of the State Department of Mines of Kentucky for the Year 1927. Lexington: Kentucky Geological Survey, 1927. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1927.pdf
Kentucky Geological Survey. Annual Report of the State Department of Mines of Kentucky for the Year 1928. Lexington: Kentucky Geological Survey, 1928. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/DanielReportMines1928.pdf
Diamond Block Coal Co. v. United Mine Workers of America, 188 Ky. 477, 222 S.W. 1079 (Ky. Ct. App. 1920). https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/decisions-courts-opinions-affecting-labor-3906/decisions-courts-opinions-affecting-labor-1919-1920-476848/fulltext
Diamond Block Coal Co. v. Sparks, 209 Ky. 73, 272 S.W. 31 (Ky. Ct. App. 1925). https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/diamond-block-coal-co-901792293
Dun and Bradstreet Reference Book: January, 1921. New York: R. G. Dun & Company, 1921. https://www.loc.gov/resource/stbdandb.jan1921v211p1/?sp=18&st=list
Rand McNally Bankers Directory: July 1920, List of Towns Without Banks, in the United States and Canada, Giving Nearest Accessible Bank and Attorney Point. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1920. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/rand-mcnally-bankers-directory-105/july-1920-583405/content/fulltext/rmbd_192007_14_towns
Rand McNally Bankers Directory: January 1921, List of Towns Without Banks, in the United States and Canada, Giving Nearest Accessible Bank and Attorney Point. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1921. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/rand-mcnally-bankers-directory-105/january-1921-583408/content/fulltext/rmbd_192101_14_towns
Rand McNally Bankers Directory: January 1930, Accessible Banking Points to Non-Bank Towns. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1930. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/rand-mcnally-bankers-directory-105/january-1930-598548/content/fulltext/rmbd_193001_13_accessiblebanking
Rand McNally Bankers Directory: Final 1934 Edition, Accessible Banking Points to Non-Bank Towns. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1934. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/rand-mcnally-bankers-directory-105/final-1934-edition-598421/content/fulltext/rmbd_1934final_14_accessiblebankingpoints
Rand McNally Bankers Directory: Final 1939 Edition, Accessible Banking Points to Non-Bank Towns in the United States. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1939. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/rand-mcnally-bankers-directory-105/final-1939-edition-598431/content/fulltext/rmbd_1939final_12_accessiblebanking
The Hazard Herald (Hazard, KY), December 11, 1942. https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/1081745475/
Whitaker, Elmer. Interview, April 7, 1989. Appalachia: Coal Operators Oral History Project. Kentucky Oral History Commission. https://kentuckyoralhistory.org/ark%3A/16417/xt7gms3k0n5n
Zubovic, Peter, Nola B. Sheffey, and Taisia Stadnichenko. Distribution of Minor Elements in Coals of the Appalachian Region. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1117-C. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/1117c/report.pdf
American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers. Mining and Metallurgy, April 1933. https://aimehq.org/doclibrary-assets/books/Mining%20and%20Metallurgy%201933/Mining%20and%20Metallurgy_1933-04.pdf
Rennick, Robert M. Place Names Beginning with the Letter D. Morehead, KY: Morehead State University, 2016. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=rennick_ms_collection
Rennick, Robert M. “Perry County – Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky 273 (2000). https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/273
Works Progress Administration and Historical Records Survey. “Perry County – General History.” County Histories of Kentucky 59 (1936). https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/59
Elbon, David C. “Diablock, Kentucky.” Kentucky Atlas & Gazetteer. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-diablock.html
La Posta: A Journal of American Postal History 34, no. 3. Accessed April 4, 2026. https://www.lapostapub.com/Backissues/LP34-3.pdf
Caudill, Harry M. Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area. Boston: Little, Brown, 1963. https://archive.org/details/nightcomestocumb1963caud
Author Note: Diablock is the kind of small Appalachian place that can disappear from memory unless you follow the paper trail closely. I wanted to gather the mine records, maps, court cases, and local references that show this Perry County community was real, active, and worth remembering.