Appalachian Community Histories – Field, Bell County: Left Fork, Red Bird Mine, and a Coal Community Kept in the Records
Field sits in the historical record as one of Bell County’s small coal communities, the kind of place that can be easy to pass over if a person is only looking for incorporated towns, courthouses, or large company towns. It was not Pineville, Middlesboro, or a county seat. Its story comes through post office records, mine reports, court cases, federal photographs, and later reclamation notices.
That record places Field in the Eastern Kentucky coal country of Bell County. Bell County itself was formed on February 5, 1867, from parts of Harlan and Knox Counties, first called Josh Bell County before the name was shortened in 1873. The county’s official history also places Bell County in Kentucky’s Eastern Coal Field region, which matters for Field because the community’s surviving record is tied closely to coal, transportation, land, and creek-valley settlement.
Field’s name survives partly because the federal government had reason to record it. The Geographic Names Information System serves as the federal standard for geographic names, and its feature classes include “Populated Place” for a settlement, town, village, or similar place with clustered or scattered buildings and a permanent human population. Field appears in GNIS-derived listings as a Bell County populated place, but the stronger historical story comes when that place name is connected to Left Fork of Straight Creek, the Field post office, Kentucky Ridge Coal Company, Coleman Fuel Company, and the Red Bird Mine.
Field and the Post Office
The clearest beginning point for Field as a named community is the post office record. A notice in the U.S. Postal Bulletin of June 1, 1932, identified Field in Bell County and placed it in relation to nearby Beverly and Slusher. That kind of postal listing is important because rural post offices often fixed a local name in official use, even when the surrounding settlement remained small and unincorporated.
Robert M. Rennick’s study of Bell County post offices gives the local place-name context. Rennick wrote that the Field post office was established in June 1932 by James Lewellen and served Left Fork rail stations near the head of the area before closing in 1954. That makes the post office more than a mailing point. It was part of the way the Left Fork coal landscape was organized and named.
Field was not isolated from neighboring coal places. The postal notice placed it near Beverly and Slusher, while other records connect it to Crockett, Kentucky Ridge, Red Bird Mine, and Left Fork of Straight Creek. In the mountains of Bell County, those relationships mattered. A community might be named one way in the postal record, another way in a mine report, and still another way in the memory of families who lived near a branch, camp, hollow, or rail stop.
Coal on Straight Creek
The coal record around Field reaches back before the Field post office. In the 1920 annual report of the Kentucky State Department of Mines, Kentucky Ridge Coal Company was listed at Elliotts Branch on a branch line of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. The mine was working the Straight Creek seam. The report stated that coal was hauled by mules and shot from solid, and it named J. H. Swartz as president and general manager, E. W. Pitman as superintendent, and James Hamton as mine foreman.
That mine report shows the older coal structure behind Field’s later identity. Rail access, creek geography, and mine ownership shaped where people lived and how communities were named. Field’s history was tied not only to a single company, but to a network of Straight Creek operations along branches, forks, and small rail stations.
A Bell County history transcription later listed Kentucky Ridge Coal Company at Crocket, Kentucky, with J. Whitfield as manager, and Coleman Fuel Company at Fields, Kentucky, with C. R. Coleman as manager. The spelling “Fields” appears there, while other records use “Field.” That kind of variation is common in coal-country records, especially where place names moved between post office notices, company lists, oral use, and local histories.
Coleman Fuel Company and Red Bird Mine
By the World War II period, Field was clearly tied to Coleman Fuel Company and the Red Bird Mine. A 1943 Federal Register entry named C. R. Coleman of Coleman Fuel Company at Field, Kentucky, placing the company and the community in a federal record during the wartime coal period.
The most vivid surviving record of Field comes from 1946, when photographer Russell Lee documented coal communities for the Solid Fuels Administration for War. DocsTeach, a National Archives educational site, explains that Lee was hired in 1946 to photograph medical, health, and housing conditions in coal communities, and that the government’s wartime involvement in the mines gave him unusual access to coal camps that were normally hard for outsiders to enter.
At Coleman Fuel Company’s Red Bird Mine in Field, Lee photographed the Whitehead, Davis, and other mining families. These images are some of the strongest primary sources for Field because they do not only name the place. They show the houses, interiors, children, lamps, water conditions, rent, and daily life of miners’ families in the late coal-camp period.
The Whitehead Home
One National Archives photograph shows the home of John Whitehead, his wife, six children, and six grandchildren. The original caption says the house stood on company-owned land. It had three rooms, no running water, no electricity, access by a mountain trail, and rented for six dollars a month. The caption also explains that the house had been built by Mr. Whitehead’s half brother under an arrangement where use of the house would be rent-free for three years before ownership reverted to the company.
Another photograph shows Mrs. John Whitehead in the kitchen with two children or grandchildren. The same caption repeats the crowded household, company-owned land, six-dollar rent, and lack of running water and electricity. The value of this photograph is not only visual. It records the terms under which a mining family lived in Field, including the relationship between family labor, company land, rent, and housing conditions.
The Whitehead images also include a photograph of a daughter of John Whitehead holding a kerosene lamp. The title itself identifies the place as Coleman Fuel Company, Red Bird Mine, Field, Bell County, Kentucky, and gives the date as August 31, 1946. A lamp in that image was not just an object. It was evidence of a house without electricity, placed beside the written captions that explain the family’s living conditions.
The Davis Family
The Davis family photographs carry the same kind of record. One image shows the two-room house of Charlie Davis, his wife, and two children. The caption says that when Davis asked the company to repair the house, he was told it was good enough. Davis’s own words in the caption described rain coming through the house so badly that the trees outside could seem drier than the rooms inside.
Another image shows the daughter of Charlie Davis walking down the steps at Coleman Fuel Company’s Red Bird Mine in Field on August 31, 1946. The title itself preserves the connection between the family, the mine, the company, and the community.
Lee also photographed Charlie Davis with his pay slip, dated July 21, 1946. That image matters because it ties the man in the housing photographs to the wage system of the mine. Together, the pay slip, the house, the children, the kitchen, and the steps make Field visible as a working coal community, not simply a dot on a map.
Land, Timber, and Mine Property
Field also appears in federal court records. In Carlson v. Kentucky Ridge Coal Company, decided in the Eastern District of Kentucky in 1954, the court described about 500 acres of mountain land on Simms Fork and Big Camp Branch in Bell County. The land was underlaid with coal and carried merchantable timber. A 1944 contract with Kentucky Ridge Coal Company involved coal mining, coke-making, timber, roads, inclines, tramways, buildings, and mining operations in the vicinity of Crocket or Field, Kentucky.
That case shows how communities like Field were tied to more than underground coal. Timber, haul roads, rights of way, land leases, branch roads, and mineral contracts were all part of the same landscape. The people who lived at Field saw the everyday side of coal. The court record shows the legal side, where land, timber, and extraction rights were argued in contracts and lawsuits.
After the Mines
Field’s coal landscape did not end when the older camps faded. In 1998, a Commerce Business Daily notice for the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service described the Crockett Collieries RAMP Project, Phase II, on Left Fork of Straight Creek near the Field Post Office. The work involved reclamation of about eleven acres used for coal mine refuse, including pollution control, vegetative treatment, riprap waterway, geotextile, tree planting, and land reconstruction.
That late twentieth-century notice is important because it shows the long afterlife of coal at Field. The mines shaped the community while they operated, but they also left landforms, refuse areas, drainage problems, and reclamation projects that lasted long after the companies and camps had changed.
Remembering Field
Field’s history is not preserved in one large monument or one simple founding story. It is scattered across federal post office records, state mine reports, coal company listings, court decisions, photographic captions, and reclamation notices. That scattered record fits the place itself. Field was a small community on the Left Fork of Straight Creek, shaped by the practical geography of coal: rails, hollows, branches, seams, company houses, rent, lamps, wells, and muddy roads.
The strongest surviving images of Field are not pictures of tipples or company offices. They are pictures of families. Russell Lee’s photographs recorded the Whiteheads, the Davises, and other mining households at Coleman Fuel Company’s Red Bird Mine in 1946. They show children on steps, women in kitchens, lamps in unlit houses, and homes where water and electricity were not guaranteed.
Field, Bell County, is therefore best understood as a coal community kept alive in the records. Its story is the story of a named place that grew around mail service, mine work, land contracts, and family survival on the edge of Straight Creek’s coal country.
Sources & Further Reading
United States Post Office Department. United States Postal Bulletin, vol. 53, no. 15921. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, June 1, 1932. https://www.uspostalbulletins.com/PDF/Vol53_Issue15921_19320601.pdf
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Bell County, Kentucky.” Morehead State University ScholarWorks. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1382&context=kentucky_county_histories
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Kentucky State Department of Mines, 1920. Frankfort, KY: State Department of Mines, 1920. https://archive.org/stream/annualreport41deptgoog/annualreport41deptgoog_djvu.txt
United States District Court, Eastern District of Kentucky. Carlson v. Kentucky Ridge Coal Company, 125 F. Supp. 257, 1954. https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914ca3dadd7b049347f8f70
Federal Register. “Coleman Fuel Company, Field, Kentucky.” Federal Register 8, no. 209, October 28, 1943. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1943-10-28/pdf/FR-1943-10-28.pdf
United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service. “Crockett Collieries RAMP Project, Phase II, Bell Co., KY.” Commerce Business Daily, May 19, 1998. https://groups.google.com/g/gov.us.fed.doc.cbd.solicitations/c/uQDjngG9_lE
Lee, Russell. “Home of John Whitehead, His Wife and Six Children and Six Grandchildren.” National Archives, Records of the Solid Fuels Administration for War, Record Group 245, August 31, 1946. https://docsteach.org/document/home-of-john-whitehead-his-wife-and-six-children-and-six-grandchildren/
Lee, Russell. “Mrs. John Whitehead.” National Archives, Records of the Solid Fuels Administration for War, Record Group 245, August 31, 1946. https://docsteach.org/document/mrs-john-whitehead/
Lee, Russell. “The Two Room House of Davis Family.” National Archives, Records of the Solid Fuels Administration for War, Record Group 245, August 31, 1946. https://docsteach.org/document/the-two-room-house-of-davis-family/
Lee, Russell. “Daughter of John Whitehead with Kerosene Lamp. Coleman Fuel Company, Red Bird Mine, Field, Bell County, Kentucky.” National Archives, Record Group 245, NAID 541204, August 31, 1946. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Daughter_of_John_Whitehead_with_kerosene_lamp._Coleman_Fuel_Company,_Red_Bird_Mine,_Field,_Bell_County,_Kentucky._-_NARA_-_541204.jpg
Lee, Russell. “Daughter of Charlie Davis Walking Down the Steps. Coleman Fuel Company, Red Bird Mine, Field, Bell County, Kentucky.” National Archives, Record Group 245, August 31, 1946. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Daughter_of_Charlie_Davis_walking_down_the_steps._Coleman_Fuel_Company,_Red_Bird_Mine,_Field,_Bell_County,_Kentucky._-_NARA_-_541138.jpg
Lee, Russell. “Charlie Davis with His Pay Slip. Coleman Fuel Company, Red Bird Mine, Field, Bell County, Kentucky.” National Archives, Record Group 245, August 31, 1946. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charlie_Davis_with_his_pay_slip._Coleman_Fuel_Company,_Red_Bird_Mine,_Field,_Bell_County,_Kentucky_-_NARA_-_541139.jpg
United States Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” U.S. Department of the Interior. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
United States Geological Survey. “GNIS Domestic Names Feature Classes.” U.S. Board on Geographic Names. https://www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-geographic-names/gnis-domestic-names-feature-classes
Trimble Transportation. “Field, Populated Place in Bell County, Kentucky.” MyTopo GNIS. https://mytopo-gnis.trimble-transportation.com/feature/kentucky/bell/populated-place/512154/field/
Rice, Charles L., and Russell G. Ping. Geologic Map of the Middlesboro North Quadrangle, Bell County, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 87-413. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1987. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/ofr87413
Rice, Charles L., and Russell G. Ping. Geologic Map of the Middlesboro North Quadrangle, Bell County, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-1663. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1989. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/gq1663
Childress, J. Daniel. Soil Survey of Bell and Harlan Counties, Kentucky. Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service, 1992. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/101758828
United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service. “Web Soil Survey.” https://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/
Kentucky Geological Survey. Bell County, Kentucky. Lexington: University of Kentucky, Kentucky Geological Survey. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/mc181_12.pdf
Kentucky Geological Survey. Geology of Kentucky: Chapter 22, Coal. University of Kentucky. https://www.uky.edu/OtherOrgs/KPS/goky/pages/gokych22.htm
KYGenWeb. “History of Bell County, Kentucky, Volume I, Chapter XII.” Transcription of Bell County historical material. https://kygenweb.net/bell/books/History_Bell_1/Chapter_XII.htm
KYGenWeb. “History of Bell County, Kentucky, Volume II.” Transcription of Henry Harvey Fuson’s Bell County history. https://kygenweb.net/bell/area/bell_history2.htm
RootsWeb. “Coal Mines in Bell County, Kentucky.” https://sites.rootsweb.com/~kycoalmi/bellcomines.html
FamilySearch. “Bell County, Kentucky Genealogy.” FamilySearch Research Wiki. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Bell_County,_Kentucky_Genealogy
Bell County, Kentucky. “About Us.” Official Website of Bell County, Kentucky. https://bellcounty.ky.gov/Pages/about.aspx
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
JBvalu. “Coal Scrip Token: Kentucky Ridge Coal Co., Field Kentucky, 5 Cents.” https://jbvalu.com/product/coal-scrip-token-kentucky-ridge-coal-co-field-kentucky-5-cents/
JBvalu. “Coal Scrip Token: Kentucky Ridge Coal Co., Field Kentucky, 10 Cents.” https://jbvalu.com/product/coal-scrip-token-kentucky-ridge-coal-co-field-kentucky-10-cents/
JBvalu. “Coal Scrip Token: Kentucky Ridge Coal Co., Field Kentucky, 50 Cents.” https://jbvalu.com/product/coal-scrip-token-kentucky-ridge-coal-co-field-kentucky-50-cents-vintage/
JBvalu. “Coal Scrip Token: Kentucky Ridge Coal Co., Field Kentucky, $1.00.” https://jbvalu.com/product/coal-scrip-token-kentucky-ridge-coal-co-field-kentucky-1-00-vintage-stock-no-cs-73/
Author Note: Field is one of those Bell County places where the story survives because scattered records kept the name alive. The post office notices, coal reports, court records, and Russell Lee photographs help show a small community that mattered deeply to the families who lived there.