Appalachian Community Histories – Ferguson, Pulaski County: The Railroad Shops, Luretha Post Office, and the Town That Steam Built
Just south of Somerset, Kentucky, Ferguson grew into a railroad community whose fortunes were tied to the locomotives traveling between Cincinnati and Chattanooga. Its streets, homes, businesses, and school developed around one of the most important industrial facilities in Pulaski County, the Ferguson Shops, where railroad employees repaired and maintained the steam engines that carried passengers and freight across the Appalachian region.
Incorporated in 1906, Ferguson became much more than a collection of houses beside a railroad yard. It developed a distinct community identity, supported by railroad employment, local businesses, passenger service, and a school that would remain an important part of the town long after the locomotive repair shops declined. Its history illustrates how a major transportation industry could build a small Kentucky community and how technological changes could threaten the institutions that had grown around it.
The Cincinnati Southern Railway and the Origins of Ferguson
The history of Ferguson begins several decades before the town was incorporated. During the nineteenth century, Cincinnati merchants and political leaders sought a direct railroad connection to the South, hoping to strengthen trade between the Ohio River Valley and cities such as Chattanooga and Atlanta. The project encountered financial and legal obstacles until Cincinnati attorney Edward A. Ferguson proposed that the city construct and own the railroad itself.
Ferguson’s proposal became the foundation of legislation passed by the Ohio General Assembly on May 4, 1869. Cincinnati voters subsequently approved the project, allowing construction to proceed on a line that would eventually stretch approximately 337 miles to Chattanooga. The first freight train completed the journey on February 21, 1880, followed by the first passenger train on March 8. In 1881, the Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway secured a lease to operate the route, which became closely associated with the Southern Railway system.
For Pulaski County, the railroad brought opportunities that extended beyond the transportation of passengers and agricultural products. Somerset became an important railroad center, attracting investment, businesses, and workers who settled near the tracks. A community known as South Somerset developed around the early railroad facilities, with its own newspaper, stores, restaurants, church, hotel, and railroad hospital.
The Pulaski County Fact Book II describes how the establishment of railroad division headquarters and the construction of the Ferguson Shops produced a substantial building boom around 1905 and 1906. Railroad investment supported new residential development and helped turn the southern outskirts of Somerset into an industrial district.
It was within this expanding railroad economy that Ferguson emerged. The community was established immediately north of the locomotive repair facilities and incorporated by the Kentucky General Assembly in 1906. Its name is generally attributed to Edward A. Ferguson, whose efforts had helped make the Cincinnati Southern Railway possible, although the city’s own historical account treats that connection as probable rather than conclusively documented.
The Ferguson Shops and the Building of a Railroad Town
The Ferguson Shops were the industrial center around which the community developed. Built in 1906, the facilities were designed to maintain and repair steam locomotives, whose operation required frequent mechanical attention, inspections, and replacement parts. The workshops brought together skilled tradesmen, railroad laborers, machinists, and other employees whose wages supported families and businesses throughout the surrounding area.
The scale of the railroad operation can be reconstructed through contemporary maps and surviving photographs. The National Railway Historical Society’s roundhouse database identifies a twenty-stall roundhouse at Ferguson, with a wooden structure, a brick rear wall, and turntable facilities. Its research references the 1908 Sanborn fire insurance map of Somerset, while the Library of Congress preserves a fifteen-sheet map from February 1914 that provides additional documentation of the area’s early industrial geography.
The city’s historical archive preserves detailed accounts and photographs of the machinery used inside the shops. Its description of the engine house indicates that eight full-sized locomotives could undergo servicing at one time, with crews assigned to the mechanical work required to return them to operation. Reconditioning a steam locomotive could take several weeks, depending on its condition and the repairs needed.
Other photographs document heavy fabrication equipment, hydraulic machinery, workbenches, and the specialized equipment used to repair railroad wheels. Machinists worked with large industrial tools, including drill presses and metal-forming equipment, while employees responsible for wheels operated machinery capable of grinding and restoring the heavy components used on locomotives and railroad cars.
These were occupations that required considerable training and experience. The shops provided a place where younger employees could learn mechanical trades while experienced railroad workers developed specialized skills.
Contemporary newspapers confirm that such training was part of the local railroad economy. In February 1920, The Somerset Journal reported that Mrs. G. E. Kelley of Covington had visited Somerset to see her son Edward, who was working as an apprentice at the Ferguson Shops. His appearance in the newspaper offers a small glimpse of how the railroad drew workers and their families into Pulaski County.
Ferguson and the Luretha Post Office
Although the community was incorporated as Ferguson in 1906, its postal history followed a different course. Another Kentucky community in Logan County already possessed a post office bearing the Ferguson name, preventing the new Pulaski County town from immediately using its municipal name for mail delivery.
Kentucky place-name historian Robert M. Rennick documented the resulting arrangement in his study of Pulaski County’s post offices, published in La Posta in 2007. According to Rennick, a post office was established in Ferguson on February 23, 1911, with George A. Wynn serving as its first postmaster. Wynn selected the name Luretha in honor of his daughter, who had been born the previous year.
Consequently, residents could live in Ferguson while receiving mail addressed to Luretha. The distinction was more than an unusual feature of local history, since it appeared in the official records through which residents conducted business, received correspondence, and identified their homes.
A contemporary newspaper provides direct evidence of the arrangement. On January 2, 1920, The Somerset Journal published a list of census enumerators assigned to Pulaski County. Harvey U. McCreary, responsible for the Ferguson precinct, was listed with Luretha as his post office address. The notice demonstrates that the postal name remained in ordinary administrative use nearly a decade after the office was established.
The arrangement continued until the competing Ferguson post office in Logan County closed in 1943. Rennick’s research identifies 1947 as the year the Pulaski County office officially assumed the town’s corporate name. Although some later summaries give a different date, his account provides the more specific postal chronology.
Railroad Workers, Wages, and the Dangers of the Shops
Railroad employment provided Ferguson with an industrial economy, but work inside a steam locomotive repair facility could be physically demanding and dangerous. Employees operated heavy machinery, handled large metal components, and performed repairs on equipment that required considerable strength and precision.
The importance of the shops to the surrounding economy is reflected in contemporary newspaper coverage of railroad employment and management. On September 10, 1920, The Somerset Journal reported that J. A. Cassada, the Southern Railway shops’ master mechanic, would remain in his position despite organizational changes elsewhere on the railroad. The newspaper expressed satisfaction that he would continue working in the area, reflecting the importance local residents placed on experienced railroad management.
The same issue reported that several thousand dollars in back pay had been distributed to employees at the Southern Railway shops, with additional payments expected. Such reports reveal the amount of money railroad operations could introduce into the local economy and the relationships between railroad employment, household income, and the businesses that served workers and their families.
The employees also participated in national discussions about railroad management. In January 1919, the Congressional Record documented a petition submitted by workers at the Ferguson Shops asking Congress to support former railroad administrator William Gibbs McAdoo’s proposal for continued federal railroad control. Their petition placed workers from a small Kentucky railroad town within a national debate over the future administration of America’s railroads following World War I.
The dangers of industrial employment appear even more clearly in the surviving record of a fatal workplace accident. On April 9, 1920, The Somerset Journal reported that William F. Meece, an employee at the Ferguson Shops, had been killed the previous Friday when a large wrench flew from the railroad car on which he was working and struck him in the head.
Meece lived along Mount Vernon Road, and his funeral was held at Piney Grove. His death serves as a reminder that the work sustaining Ferguson’s economy also carried risks for the men employed in its shops and for the families who depended on their earnings.
The Ferguson Depot and a Connection to the Wider South
The railroad’s importance to Ferguson extended beyond its industrial facilities. Passenger service connected the town and nearby Somerset with communities throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and the wider South, while the local depot became an important point of arrival and departure.
According to the City of Ferguson’s historical archive, construction of a substantial railroad depot took place during the summer and fall of 1916. Its surviving photographic collection documents the construction process and provides an account of the materials used in the building.
The municipal archive reports that much of the lumber came from Pulaski County timberlands overlooking the Rockcastle River, while the bricks were manufactured near Burnside. Stone, roofing materials, and glass were obtained from other locations, including Tennessee, Georgia, and Cincinnati. Railroad supervisors oversaw the project, while local workers performed much of the construction. These details survive in the city’s retrospective account and offer a useful starting point for further research into the original construction contracts.
The completed station served Ferguson and Somerset, bringing regional passengers to an important stopping point on the Cincinnati-to-Chattanooga route. The municipal archive remembers travelers arriving from surrounding counties to board trains that did not stop at every smaller station.
For Ferguson residents, passenger service also became part of community life. The railroad’s influence reached into the local school, where generations of students remembered traveling south on passenger trains for senior trips. The journeys to Florida became a particularly enduring part of the school’s alumni history.
Churches, Families, and Community Life
Although the railroad dominated Ferguson’s economic development, the town’s history cannot be understood entirely through locomotives, machinery, and employment statistics. Families established homes near the shops, children attended school, and residents developed religious and social institutions that brought the community together outside working hours.
One example survives in an October 3, 1919, issue of The Somerset Journal. The newspaper reported on a religious revival conducted by the Reverend Wesley Colyer and the Reverend John A. Woods near the railroad shops, immediately south of Ferguson.
The meeting began on September 7 and continued until September 28. According to the newspaper, approximately forty people professed conversion during the revival, including a considerable number of railroad employees. The report provides an unusually direct glimpse of religious life among Ferguson’s working families and shows how the industrial community participated in the broader religious traditions of Pulaski County.
As Ferguson developed, the railroad also became closely associated with the welfare of employees and their families. The city’s historical archive remembers railroad-provided healthcare, holiday gifts, paid vacations, passenger travel privileges, and retirement benefits. Although the precise terms and availability of these benefits require confirmation in original employment records, the accounts demonstrate how former residents remembered the railroad’s role in their family lives.
These relationships helped establish a community identity that extended beyond the workplace. For many families, the railroad determined where they lived, provided their principal income, and helped shape the opportunities available to their children.
Ferguson School and the Education of a Railroad Community
Ferguson School became one of the community’s most important institutions. Established during the early years of the railroad town, it served children from Ferguson and the surrounding rural area, eventually developing a comprehensive educational program that included elementary and high school instruction.
The city’s historical account associates the development and financial support of the school with the railroad, whose employees had a direct interest in the education of their children. Local alumni remember the school as an institution closely connected to the town’s industrial prosperity, with the resources available to the community influencing its facilities, publications, and activities.
Surviving photographs, yearbooks, and school newspapers offer a detailed record of student life during the twentieth century. The municipal archive preserves photographs of students, faculty members, school activities, and graduating classes, allowing former residents and their descendants to identify people who attended the school across several generations.
In the fall of 1960, Ferguson students revived their school newspaper under the name The Prospector. A photograph preserved in the student archive identifies members of the newspaper staff, including editor Cecil Goff and other students responsible for its production. The archive also preserves a photograph of the 1962 yearbook staff and records that Ferguson continued publishing yearbooks through the 1967–1968 school year.
Athletics formed another important part of the school’s identity. The surviving sports archive includes a photograph of Ferguson’s 1927 varsity basketball team, along with images of football, baseball, basketball, and cheerleading teams from later decades.
One particularly memorable basketball season occurred in 1960–1961, when the Ferguson War Horses recovered from a difficult early schedule and went on to win the district championship. The alumni archive records a victory over Somerset in the district final, followed by further postseason success before Ferguson’s season ended against Stanford.
These photographs and publications preserve aspects of Ferguson’s history that are absent from railroad company records. They document the friendships, sporting traditions, academic activities, and family relationships that gave the town a community identity independent of its principal employer.
The Arrival of Diesel Locomotives and the Decline of the Ferguson Shops
For much of the first half of the twentieth century, Ferguson’s prosperity depended on a transportation technology that was gradually becoming obsolete. Steam locomotives required regular servicing, substantial maintenance facilities, and a workforce trained to repair their complicated mechanical systems. The development of diesel-electric locomotives transformed those requirements.
Southern Railway’s introduction of diesel-electric motive power reduced the need for traditional steam locomotive maintenance facilities. Diesel locomotives could operate over longer distances with different servicing requirements, making large repair facilities at intermediate locations less necessary.
Ferguson’s historical archive preserves a cover from Ties, the Southern Railway employee magazine, documenting the introduction of diesel-electric locomotive technology on the railroad. Its accompanying account describes the significance of the new locomotives for the Ferguson Shops and the eventual decision to phase out the yard.
The economic consequences were substantial. The Pulaski County Fact Book II reports that the Ferguson Shops had once employed nearly a thousand workers but that the workforce had fallen to fewer than one hundred as steam locomotives were replaced. These are retrospective estimates rather than figures independently established from surviving company payrolls, but they illustrate the scale of the decline remembered in Pulaski County.
As employment disappeared, the surrounding economy lost a major source of wages and commercial activity. Families whose livelihoods depended on the railroad faced an uncertain future, while local businesses lost customers who had previously supported the town’s commercial life.
The National Railway Historical Society’s roundhouse research places the disappearance of Ferguson’s major roundhouse facilities during the 1950s, although the available historical accounts do not establish a single definitive date for every stage of the shops’ closure and demolition.
For a community built around steam locomotive maintenance, the change represented more than the loss of an employer. It removed the industrial foundation that had influenced Ferguson’s development for nearly half a century.
The Closing of Ferguson High School
The decline of the railroad economy also affected the institutions that had developed around it. Ferguson School continued operating after the shops lost their former importance, but the community’s changing financial circumstances created difficulties for maintaining an independent educational system.
The city’s school archive describes declining enrollment, a weakening tax base, and disagreements over educational administration during the 1960s. Its account of the 1965–1967 school board identifies chairman Ralph Duncan and superintendent Herbert T. Higgins among the local officials involved in efforts to maintain the school.
According to the archive, the board faced considerable pressure during the 1966–1967 academic year as officials considered the future of Ferguson’s independent high school. In April 1967, the school board was directed to develop a plan for ending high school instruction, bringing decades of independent secondary education toward a close. These accounts preserve the local perspective on the dispute, although a complete reconstruction would also require the original school board minutes and state education records.
The 1967–1968 graduating class became Ferguson High School’s last. Its departure marked the end of an institution that had helped define the town for generations, although elementary instruction continued at Ferguson afterward.
The loss of the high school followed the disappearance of much of the railroad economy, reinforcing a transformation that had begun with the decline of steam locomotive maintenance.
Preserving Ferguson’s Railroad and School History
Much of Ferguson’s surviving community history has been preserved through the efforts of former residents and school alumni. Among the most important contributors was Nancy Atchley, a member of Ferguson High School’s final graduating class.
In September 2008, Atchley began an online discussion asking former Ferguson students whether they remembered attending the school. According to the municipal archive, the discussion attracted thousands of responses, bringing together alumni and residents who shared photographs, newspaper clippings, and memories of their years in Ferguson.
The project eventually developed into a dedicated historical website, FergusonSchool.com, which preserved photographs and accounts of the school’s students, teachers, sports teams, and surrounding community. Its material later became part of the City of Ferguson’s historical archive, where many of those documents and photographs remain accessible.
The collection is particularly significant because it preserves the perspectives of people whose experiences might otherwise have disappeared from the historical record. Railroad photographs document the work performed in the shops, while school yearbooks, class photographs, and newspaper clippings reveal the lives of the families whose labor sustained the railroad community.
Today, those materials can be studied alongside original newspaper reporting, census records, railroad documents, and Sanborn maps. Together, they provide opportunities to reconstruct Ferguson’s physical development, investigate the experiences of individual railroad employees, and understand the economic changes that reshaped the community during the twentieth century.
Ferguson’s Place in Appalachian History
Ferguson’s history offers an important example of the relationship between industrial development and community life in Appalachian Kentucky. Unlike settlements whose growth depended primarily on coal mining, logging, or agricultural trade, Ferguson developed around railroad maintenance and the skilled labor required to keep a major transportation corridor operating.
The Ferguson Shops created employment, encouraged residential development, and supported institutions that served generations of local families. The community’s distinctive postal history, passenger depot, religious gatherings, school traditions, and surviving accounts of railroad labor reveal a town whose identity extended far beyond the machinery at the center of its economy.
The transition from steam to diesel locomotives ultimately changed that relationship. As the shops became unnecessary, Ferguson experienced the economic and institutional consequences of losing the industry that had supported its development.
Yet the history of Ferguson did not end with the disappearance of its roundhouse or the graduation of its final high school class. Its surviving photographs, records, and memories preserve the story of a community that grew beside one of America’s important north-to-south railroad connections. They offer a reminder that the industrial history of Appalachia was shaped not only by coal mines and timber operations but also by railroad towns, where skilled workers and their families built communities around the transportation systems that connected the region to the wider country.
Sources & Further Reading
Ferguson, Edward Alexander. Founding of the Cincinnati Southern Railway. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke Company, 1905. https://books.google.com/books?id=8Myn4F02lDUC
United States Congress. Congressional Record. 65th Cong., 3rd sess., January 23, 1919. Petition from employees of the Ferguson Shops concerning William Gibbs McAdoo’s railroad-control proposal. https://www.congress.gov/65/crecb/1919/01/23/GPO-CRECB-1919-pt2-v57-17.pdf
The Somerset Journal. “Ferguson.” September 12, 1919. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/9_12_1919.htm
The Somerset Journal. “Tent Meeting Closes.” October 3, 1919. Report on the religious revival near the Ferguson railroad shops. Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/10_3_1919.htm
The Somerset Journal. January 2, 1920. Census enumerator appointments identifying Luretha as the postal address for the Ferguson precinct. Pulaski County Public Library Digital Archives. https://pulaskilibrary.advantage-preservation.com/
The Somerset Journal. February 6, 1920. Local notices concerning Southern Railway employees, apprentices, and Pulaski County residents. Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/2_6_1920.htm
The Somerset Journal. April 9, 1920. Report on the fatal accident involving William F. Meece at the Ferguson Shops. Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/4_9_1920.htm
The Somerset Journal. September 10, 1920. Reports concerning Southern Railway master mechanic J. A. Cassada and employee back pay. Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/9_10_1920.htm
Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Somerset, Pulaski County, Kentucky. January 1897. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn03244_003/
Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Somerset, Pulaski County, Kentucky. February 1914. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn03244_006/
United States Geological Survey. Somerset, Kentucky. Topographic map, 1935. Robert M. Rennick Topographical Maps Collection, Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_maps_all/934/
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Pulaski County, Kentucky, Part 2.” La Posta: A Journal of American Postal History 38, no. 4 (2007): 58–67. https://www.lapostapub.com/Backissues/LP38-4.pdf
Rennick, Robert M. “Pulaski County: Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky, no. 388. Morehead State University, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/388/
Works Progress Administration and Robert M. Rennick. “Pulaski County: Post Offices & Place Names.” County Histories of Kentucky, no. 284. Morehead State University. Cataloged as 1939. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/284/
Pulaski County Fact Book II. “Chapter 4: Industrial Development.” Digitized by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/fact_book/four.htm
City of Ferguson, Kentucky. “History.” Municipal historical archive containing photographs, railroad records, local narratives, and the Nancy Atchley Ferguson School Archive. https://cityoffergusonky.gov/history/
City of Ferguson, Kentucky. “Community.” Nancy Atchley Ferguson School Archive. Historical photographs and accounts of Ferguson’s railroad depot, community institutions, and residents. https://cityoffergusonky.gov/community/
City of Ferguson, Kentucky. “Students.” Nancy Atchley Ferguson School Archive. Historical student photographs, newspaper publications, class trips, and yearbook records. https://cityoffergusonky.gov/students/
City of Ferguson, Kentucky. “Staff.” Nancy Atchley Ferguson School Archive. Historical photographs and accounts of teachers, administrators, and school board members. https://cityoffergusonky.gov/staff/
City of Ferguson, Kentucky. “Sports.” Nancy Atchley Ferguson School Archive. Historical photographs and accounts of Ferguson High School athletics. https://cityoffergusonky.gov/sports/
Cincinnati Southern Railway Trust. “Our History.” Institutional history of the Cincinnati Southern Railway, its founding, construction, and operations. https://thecsrt.org/history/
National Railway Historical Society. “Bygone Roundhouse Online Database.” Historical inventory of railroad roundhouses, including Ferguson’s twenty-stall roundhouse and associated turntables. https://nrhs.com/programs/extant-and-bygone-roundhouses/bygone-roundhouse-online-database/
Pulaski County Public Library. Digital Archives. Somerset, KY. Historical newspapers, census records, court records, tax lists, and other local historical documents. https://pulaskilibrary.advantage-preservation.com/
Morehead State University. Robert M. Rennick Topographical Maps Collection. Camden-Carroll Library. Historical United States Geological Survey maps and annotated Kentucky place-name records. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_maps_all/
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” Record Group 28. Federal postal records, including Kentucky records covering Pulaski County. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950
Library of Congress. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Washington, DC: Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83045462/
Author Note: Ferguson’s history reminds us that Appalachian communities were built not only around coal mines and timber camps but also around the railroads that connected the mountains to the rest of the country. By preserving the stories of its railroad workers, families, and schoolchildren, we remember a Pulaski County community whose identity survived the disappearance of the industry that helped establish it.