Appalachian Community Histories – Eubank, Pulaski County: From Cuba and Cato to a Railroad Town on the Lincoln County Line
Along the northern edge of Pulaski County, where the countryside stretches toward neighboring Lincoln County, the small community of Eubank developed from a rural settlement into an incorporated railroad town during the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Its history reaches back to an earlier community known as Cuba, a post office called Cato, and the construction of the Cincinnati Southern Railroad, which transformed transportation and commerce throughout south-central Kentucky.
Unlike the larger commercial centers of Somerset and Stanford, Eubank developed around the needs of the surrounding agricultural countryside. Its railroad station, post office, churches, businesses, and schools connected rural families to neighboring communities and more distant cities. The settlement acquired its present name during the 1870s, and its incorporation in 1886 established a municipal identity that would survive the economic and transportation changes of the following century.
Today, Eubank extends across the Pulaski and Lincoln county line, approximately fourteen miles north of Somerset. Although its population has remained relatively small, surviving postal histories, contemporary newspapers, historic maps, school photographs, and government records reveal a community with a considerably longer and more detailed history than its present size might suggest.
Before Eubank: The Early Settlement of Cuba and Cato
The history of Eubank begins before the railroad arrived and before the community acquired the name by which it is known today. During the nineteenth century, the countryside of northern Pulaski County was occupied by scattered farms and small settlements whose residents depended upon agriculture, local merchants, churches, and country roads connecting them to Somerset and the neighboring communities of Lincoln County.
One of these early settlements was known as Cuba. Although the exact location and boundaries of the original community require additional investigation through early property records, its existence is preserved in the historical research of Kentucky place-name scholar Robert M. Rennick and the Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer.
The area’s postal history provides some of the earliest documentary evidence of a recognizable settlement. According to Kentucky Atlas, a post office called Cato was established in 1858, possibly a short distance from the present town at Cuba. The name Cuba could not be retained for the post office because another Kentucky postal establishment had already claimed it.
This distinction between a community’s local name and its official postal designation was common during the nineteenth century. Rural settlements were often known by family names, nearby churches, mills, or geographic features before acquiring an official designation through the United States Post Office Department.
The establishment of Cato indicates that the surrounding countryside had developed sufficiently to require regular postal service before the Civil War. However, the surviving published histories do not establish the precise location of the first post office or identify every individual involved in its operation.
The original postal appointment registers, together with Pulaski County’s early deeds and tax assessments, offer opportunities to reconstruct this earlier period and identify the families who lived in the vicinity before the railroad transformed the settlement.
The Cincinnati Southern Railroad and the Birth of Eubanks Station
The construction of the Cincinnati Southern Railroad during the 1870s fundamentally changed the transportation geography of northern Pulaski County. The railway was designed to connect Cincinnati with Chattanooga, establishing a major north-to-south transportation corridor through Kentucky and Tennessee.
Construction advanced through Kentucky during the decade, and trains began operating over completed sections of the route in 1877. The entire 337-mile line was sufficiently complete for the first through freight train to reach Chattanooga on February 21, 1880, followed by the first through passenger train on March 8. The railway connected agricultural communities and emerging towns to an extensive system of commercial markets that had previously been difficult to reach by wagon.
For the settlement around Cato, the arrival of the railroad represented a turning point. Postal historian Robert M. Rennick established that the post office was relocated approximately two miles northwest to the new railway on August 29, 1877, when it acquired the name Eubanks Station.
The name honored Wesley Eubanks, a local landowner associated with the developing railroad community. The post office retained the longer designation until October 6, 1880, when it was officially shortened to Eubank.
There is some disagreement in later accounts concerning the town’s namesake. While Rennick’s postal research and Kentucky Atlas identify Wesley Eubank or Eubanks, another account circulated online attributes the name to Joseph Eubank and connects him to Daniel Boone’s movement into Kentucky. That alternative account has not been established through contemporary land grants or other original records and should be treated as an unverified tradition.
The railroad’s influence extended beyond the community’s name. A station provided a transportation connection for agricultural products, incoming merchandise, passengers, and correspondence, while encouraging businesses to establish themselves near the tracks. Farmers in the surrounding countryside gained access to a transportation network that extended well beyond Pulaski County, and merchants could obtain manufactured goods from cities farther north and south.
By 1895, Eubank had become an established stop on the regional transportation network. Rand McNally’s Business Atlas and Shippers’ Guide, as identified by the historical reference collection RoadsideThoughts, listed the community as possessing a post office, railroad station, and express office. These facilities demonstrate that Eubank had developed the infrastructure necessary to serve surrounding farms and participate in regional commerce.
The railroad therefore did more than provide transportation through northern Pulaski County. It encouraged the concentration of commercial and postal activities at a new location, transforming an older rural settlement into the town that eventually became Eubank.
Incorporation in 1886 and the Growth of the Railroad Town
As the railroad community developed during the late nineteenth century, Eubank acquired a more formal civic identity. According to Rennick’s research, the town was incorporated on January 18, 1886, less than a decade after the relocation of the post office to the railway.
The incorporation recognized the growth of a settlement that had already established a railroad station, postal service, and connections to the surrounding agricultural countryside. The original legislation belongs to the Kentucky General Assembly’s acts of 1886, although its specific provisions and original municipal boundaries require examination of the relevant legislative act.
Eubank’s location near the Pulaski and Lincoln county line gave the community relationships with both counties. Somerset served as the county seat of Pulaski County to the south, while Stanford served the same function for Lincoln County to the north. The railway provided a transportation corridor between these larger towns, allowing Eubank to occupy a position within a developing network of smaller railroad communities.
The town’s nineteenth-century commercial history remains incompletely documented. The 1895 business directory establishes the existence of railway and express services, but additional newspaper advertisements, merchant directories, and property records are needed to identify the earliest stores, commercial buildings, and other businesses.
Nevertheless, the surviving records establish that Eubank had developed beyond a rural post office by the end of the nineteenth century. Its incorporation, postal identity, and railway facilities gave it many of the institutions associated with Kentucky’s small agricultural trading towns.
A Rand McNally county map published in 1911 continued to identify Eubank among the established communities of Pulaski County, documenting the town’s place within the region’s early twentieth-century transportation and settlement network.
Agriculture, Churches, and Community Life in the Early Twentieth Century
Although the railroad played an important role in Eubank’s development, much of the community’s everyday life continued to revolve around farming, churches, schools, and family relationships. Contemporary newspaper reports from the early twentieth century preserve a particularly valuable record of these activities, documenting the people and institutions that were important to local residents.
One revealing example appeared in the April 16, 1920, edition of The Somerset Journal. The newspaper’s Eubank correspondent reported that S. T. Webb of Vanceburg had been in the community soliciting acreage for the local cannery. The report suggests efforts to organize agricultural production for commercial processing, although additional records are needed to establish the cannery’s operating history and the crops it handled.
The same issue described local religious services, social gatherings, business visitors, and residents traveling between Eubank and neighboring communities. Such reports demonstrate how country newspapers served as informal chronicles of community life, preserving details that seldom appeared in official government records.
Churches were particularly important institutions in Eubank during this period. Newspaper correspondence from October 1919 reported that the Reverend J. Scott Greer was conducting a meeting at the community’s Christian Church. Reports from 1920 also documented Baptist services and other religious activities, providing evidence of several congregations serving local families.
The community’s religious buildings also provided space for educational and cultural events. In January 1921, The Somerset Journal announced that Eubank’s Methodist Episcopal Church would host the opening presentation of a lyceum course, an organized program of lectures and entertainment intended for the community.
These activities demonstrate that Eubank’s churches provided more than regular worship services. They were gathering places for public programs, visiting speakers, social occasions, and the relationships that connected residents throughout the surrounding countryside.
The newspaper’s community columns also reveal how closely Eubank remained connected to destinations beyond Kentucky. Reports repeatedly mentioned residents traveling to or returning from Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and other states, offering glimpses of family networks that extended far beyond the town’s municipal boundaries.
The Railroad and the Movement of People
The railroad continued to influence Eubank during the early twentieth century, but its importance was not confined to the movement of merchandise. It also provided a route through which residents of Pulaski County could seek employment in northern industrial cities.
A particularly revealing newspaper account appeared in The Somerset Journal on July 30, 1920. The editor described observing more than twenty young men from Pulaski County boarding trains between Somerset and Eubank, all reportedly traveling toward industrial employment in Cincinnati, Dayton, Akron, or Detroit.
The report reflected concern over the departure of young workers from the county’s agricultural communities. The editor connected their movement to the higher wages available in northern factories and to changing expectations among young men who had returned from military service following the First World War.
Although the article does not identify these travelers as Eubank residents, it demonstrates the community’s position along an important migration corridor. The same railway that had encouraged commercial development during the 1870s became part of a transportation network carrying a new generation of Kentuckians toward employment opportunities in the industrial Midwest.
The railroad also presented dangers to those who lived and worked near its tracks. On June 4, 1920, The Somerset Journal reported the death of Reverend R. E. Todd, a respected Eubank minister who had been struck by a passenger train while attempting to move out of the path of a freight train.
According to the contemporary account, Todd was returning home from milking when the accident occurred. He died while being transported to a hospital in Danville, and his death was mourned by relatives and members of the surrounding community.
Such newspaper reports preserve both the opportunities and the dangers associated with the railway. For Eubank, railroad transportation was woven into commercial activity, employment, migration, and the experiences of the families who lived beside the tracks.
Eubank High School and the Community’s Educational Traditions
Education became another important part of Eubank’s identity during the early twentieth century. The community supported a high school that served local students and became a center of academic, athletic, and social activities.
A December 10, 1920, edition of The Somerset Journal reported that Eubank High School had received a new 21-volume set of The New International Encyclopaedia, together with additional library books and other educational materials. The announcement provides evidence of the school’s efforts to expand its instructional resources during an era when rural educational institutions often struggled to obtain sufficient books and equipment.
The town’s school was already part of a larger county educational network. Newspaper accounts from 1920 identified Eubank as a graded school district, while common school examinations offered students from surrounding rural communities a route into county high schools.
These institutions connected education with the wider social development of northern Pulaski County, providing opportunities for children whose families lived beyond the incorporated town.
Historical photographs preserved by the Pulaski County Public Library offer an especially valuable record of Eubank’s educational history. The library’s extensive Eubank Schools collection includes images of students, classes, teachers, school buildings, and other activities spanning multiple generations.
Among these records are photographs taken by Jim Slaughter in 1951 and 1953, documenting Eubank students and school activities during the decade preceding the construction of the community’s consolidated elementary school.
The collection also preserves photographs from the 1960s and 1970s, including school organizations and academic ceremonies. A photograph from May 2, 1969, documents the induction of eight new members into Eubank High School’s chapter of the National Honor Society, providing a record of students, school administrators, and academic recognition during the institution’s later history.
These images preserve an important part of Eubank’s past. They identify students and educators who otherwise might survive only in family recollections or scattered newspaper announcements, while documenting the educational institutions that connected generations of residents to the community.
The Construction of Eubank Elementary School in 1956
One of the most significant changes in Eubank’s educational history occurred following the Second World War, when Pulaski County began replacing smaller rural schoolhouses with larger consolidated elementary schools.
The consolidation movement reflected changing educational expectations, population patterns, improved roads, and the increasing availability of school transportation. Throughout rural Kentucky, one-room and two-room schools that had served individual neighborhoods were gradually replaced by larger institutions designed to accommodate students from wider geographic areas.
Pulaski County participated extensively in this transformation. According to the National Register of Historic Places nomination prepared for Eubank Elementary School, the county constructed several consolidated elementary schools between 1951 and 1963, eventually eliminating its remaining small rural one-room and two-room public schools by 1963.
Eubank Elementary School was constructed in 1956, becoming the second of the county’s new consolidated elementary schools following Burnside Elementary. While Burnside served the southern portion of the county, Eubank provided an expanded educational facility for families in northern Pulaski County.
The original building occupied an approximately L-shaped layout and followed the modern architectural principles associated with postwar school construction. Rather than emphasizing elaborate architectural decoration, the school featured a practical one-story design, extensive classroom windows, and a layout that could accommodate future expansion.
Its construction represented a departure from the small neighborhood schoolhouses that had characterized earlier generations of rural education. The new institution was intended to serve a considerably larger geographic area while providing facilities that could be adapted as educational needs changed.
The school’s growth began relatively quickly. An addition was constructed in 1963, followed by another expansion in 1974. Further construction in 1989 provided additional classrooms, a library, and a media center, while later improvements included a gymnasium and an expanded cafeteria completed in 2014.
The successive additions reflect the changing expectations placed upon rural public schools during the second half of the twentieth century. Buildings that originally provided basic classroom instruction gradually developed into larger educational campuses with specialized facilities for recreation, student services, and modern instructional programs.
Despite these changes, Eubank Elementary retained important elements of its original design, allowing the building itself to serve as a record of the county’s educational development.
Eubank Elementary School and the National Register of Historic Places
The historical importance of Eubank Elementary School received federal recognition on April 17, 2025, when the building was officially listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
The designation recognized the school’s significance within the broader development of Kentucky’s public education system, particularly the consolidation movement that transformed rural schooling after the Second World War. The nomination identified the building as an example of postwar school architecture and emphasized its historical role in providing modern educational facilities for the surrounding rural population.
The National Register nomination, prepared by architectural historian Wes Cunningham, provides an unusually detailed documentary record of the property. In addition to its educational history, the report includes architectural descriptions, historical floor plans, photographs, maps, and information about the school’s successive expansions.
These materials establish the original 1956 building as an important surviving element of Eubank’s postwar history. They also document the relationship between the school and the development of northern Pulaski County, where improvements in transportation and educational infrastructure gradually changed the organization of rural communities.
The school’s recognition provides Eubank with a formally documented historic property whose significance extends beyond the town itself. Its surviving architecture preserves the history of educational consolidation in Kentucky, while its continued use connects the original building with later generations of students and teachers.
Eubank in the Modern Era
As the twentieth century progressed, improved highways and the increasing importance of automobiles changed the relationship between Eubank and neighboring communities. The railroad remained an identifiable feature of the town, but automobile transportation provided residents with additional access to employment, shopping, schools, and other services in Somerset and Stanford.
The town’s location near U.S. Highway 27 and the intersection of Kentucky Routes 70 and 1247 reflects the importance of these changing transportation networks. What had developed around a nineteenth-century railway station gradually became a community connected to the wider region by modern highways.
Despite these changes, Eubank retained its identity as a small incorporated town. The 1920 federal census, reported in The Somerset Journal that August, recorded 312 residents, compared with 182 in 1910. A century later, the 2020 United States Census recorded 313 residents within the incorporated city. Changes in municipal boundaries over time mean that the figures should not be interpreted as a precise comparison of the same geographic area, but they demonstrate the town’s continued small scale.
The community’s historical character also survives in the records of its churches, schools, cemeteries, and local families. Although individual buildings and businesses have changed over time, these institutions preserve evidence of a town whose development was closely connected to the agricultural communities of northern Pulaski County and southern Lincoln County.
Preserving the History of Eubank
Much of Eubank’s history survives in archival collections that have become increasingly accessible to researchers and local families. The Pulaski County Public Library’s photograph collection is particularly important, containing historical images of downtown Eubank, its schools, community organizations, and generations of residents.
A photograph from the Jim Slaughter Photography Collection documents the community’s downtown business district, preserving a visual record of the commercial center that developed around the original railroad settlement. Other photographs document Eubank High School during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, providing evidence of the educational and social activities that helped define the town.
Historical newspapers offer another substantial resource. The University of Kentucky’s Kentucky Digital Newspaper Program, the Library of Congress, and the Pulaski County Public Library preserve publications from Somerset, Stanford, and neighboring communities. Together, these newspapers can help reconstruct the activities of Eubank’s earliest merchants, churches, schools, public officials, and local families.
Additional information survives in the original records of the Kentucky General Assembly, federal census schedules, early postal records, and nineteenth-century property documents. The town’s location across two counties makes it particularly important to consult records from both Pulaski and Lincoln counties rather than relying exclusively upon sources from Somerset.
There are still unanswered questions about Eubank’s earliest history, particularly the exact location of Cuba, the circumstances surrounding the original Cato post office, and the identities of the first families and merchants who established themselves near the railroad. Further investigation of nineteenth-century newspapers and original land transactions could help resolve these uncertainties and provide a more complete account of the town’s development.
The Legacy of Eubank
Eubank’s history reflects the development of a small Kentucky community through successive changes in transportation, agriculture, education, and local institutions. What began as a rural settlement associated with Cuba and Cato acquired a new identity when the Cincinnati Southern Railroad arrived during the 1870s, transforming the area into an established railway station and encouraging the development of an incorporated town.
During the decades that followed, Eubank’s schools and churches became important centers of community life, while its railroad connected local residents to employment, commerce, and family networks extending across Kentucky and into the industrial Midwest. The construction of Eubank Elementary School in 1956 marked another important transition, reflecting the movement away from small neighborhood schoolhouses toward larger consolidated educational facilities serving northern Pulaski County.
Today, historical photographs, contemporary newspapers, original postal records, and the surviving elementary school preserve the evidence of those changes. The school’s inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places provides formal recognition of one important part of that history, while the records of the older town continue to offer opportunities for further investigation.
Eubank’s story is not simply the history of a railroad station or an incorporated municipality. It is the history of the families, farmers, merchants, educators, ministers, and railroad workers who transformed a small settlement on the Pulaski and Lincoln county line into a community whose identity has endured for more than a century.
Sources & Further Reading
Cunningham, Wes, and Michael Langmyer. “Eubank Elementary School.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Kentucky Heritage Council, October 2024. https://heritage.ky.gov/historic-places/national-register/Documents/School,%20Pulaski%20County,%20Eubank%20Elementary%20School,%20final.pdf.
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Pulaski County, Kentucky, Part 2.” La Posta: A Journal of American Postal History 38, no. 4 (2007): 58 ff. https://www.lapostapub.com/Backissues/LP38-4.pdf.
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Robert+M.+Rennick+Kentucky+Place+Names.
Works Progress Administration and Robert M. Rennick. “Pulaski County: Post Offices & Place Names.” County Histories of Kentucky, no. 284. Morehead State University, 1939. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/284/.
Kentucky General Assembly. Acts Passed at the Session of the General Assembly for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Frankfort, 1886. https://books.google.com/books?id=okFNAQAAMAAJ.
The Somerset Journal. “Eubank.” Community correspondence, October 10, 1919. Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/10_10_1919.htm.
The Somerset Journal. “Eubank.” Community correspondence, April 16, 1920. Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/4_16_1920.htm.
The Somerset Journal. “Eubank News.” June 4, 1920. Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/6_4_1920.htm.
The Somerset Journal. “Editorials.” July 30, 1920. Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/7_30_1920.htm.
The Somerset Journal. Census report for Pulaski County and its incorporated towns. August 6, 1920. Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/8_6_1920.htm.
The Somerset Journal. Community news, school developments, and advertisements for the Eubank Canning Company. October 22, 1920. Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/10_22_1920.htm.
The Somerset Journal. “Eubank.” Community correspondence and Eubank High School news. December 10, 1920. Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/12_10_1920_3.htm.
The Somerset Journal. “Eubank.” Community correspondence and announcement of the lyceum course. January 7, 1921. Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/1_1921/1_7_1921_3.htm.
Semi-Weekly Interior Journal. Stanford, Kentucky, 1881–1905. Historical newspaper collection. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn85052020/.
Pulaski County Public Library. “Eubank High School.” Photograph by Jim Slaughter, October 22, 1951. Historical Photograph Collection. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pcplphotos/27441338242.
Pulaski County Public Library. “Eubank School.” Photograph by Jim Slaughter, 1953. Historical Photograph Collection. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pcplphotos/26367304940.
Pulaski County Public Library. “Eubank.” Downtown Eubank photograph. Jim Slaughter Photography Collection. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pcplphotos/35035500592.
National Park Service. “Weekly List of Actions Taken on Properties: April 18, 2025.” National Register of Historic Places. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, 2025. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalregister/weekly-list-2025-04-18.htm.
Lewis, Richard Q., Alfred R. Taylor, and Gordon W. Weir. Geologic Map of the Eubank Quadrangle, South-Central Kentucky. Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-1096. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1973. https://doi.org/10.3133/gq1096.
U.S. Geological Survey. Eubank, Kentucky. 7.5-minute topographic quadrangle, 1961. USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps.
Cincinnati Southern Railway Trust. “Our History.” Cincinnati Southern Railway Trust. https://thecsrt.org/history/.
Rand McNally & Company. Business Atlas and Shippers’ Guide. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1895. Eubank entry identified in RoadsideThoughts; the original entry should be consulted for independent verification. https://roadsidethoughts.com/ky/eubank-xx-pulaski-mentions.htm.
University of Kentucky Libraries. “Kentucky Digital Newspaper Program.” University of Kentucky. https://kentuckynewspapers.org/program/.
Kentucky Secretary of State. “Kentucky Land Office.” Commonwealth of Kentucky. https://www.sos.ky.gov/land/.
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “Eubank, Kentucky.” https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-eubank.html.
Author Note: Eubank’s history reveals how a small agricultural settlement developed into a railroad town whose schools, churches, and families shaped northern Pulaski County. If you have family photographs, historical documents, or memories of Eubank’s railroad, businesses, or schools, I encourage you to share them so that more of this community’s history can be preserved.