Appalachian Community Histories – Kay Jay, Knox County: From Lunsford to a Kentucky-Jellico Coal Camp
In southern Knox County, the road to Kay Jay follows one of the oldest patterns in Appalachian coal country. A creek cut a route through the hills. A railroad followed the creek. A coal company built around the seam. Then a name that began in company shorthand became a community that outlived the railroad and the mine.
Kay Jay, also written Kayjay, sits in the Brush Creek country between Wheeler, Trosper, and Artemus. Modern Kentucky Transportation Cabinet records place Kayjay on KY 225, the road running from the Bell County line by way of Wheeler, Kayjay, and Trosper to Artemus. Older railroad sources place the community at Lunsford, later Kay Jay, near the upper end of the Artemus-Jellico Railroad. Robert M. Rennick’s Kentucky place-name work connects the Kayjay name to the Kentucky-Jellico Coal Company, whose initials helped turn an older local name into a coal-camp name.
Before Kay Jay Was Kay Jay
Before Kay Jay became Kay Jay, the place was tied to Lunsford. Rennick’s post-office research traces Lunsford as an older name in the area, then connects the later Kayjay name to the Kentucky-Jellico Coal Company. His Knox County post-office notes also record that Kayjay’s post office was re-established on April 9, 1931, with Claudius D. Silvers listed as the first postmaster in the available entry.
That naming history matters. In many Appalachian communities, the name on the post office, the railroad station, the company payroll, and the cemetery did not always match perfectly. Kay Jay preserves that layered story. Lunsford belonged to an older local geography. Kay Jay belonged to the coal company era. The people who lived there carried both histories.
The Railroad Up Brush Creek
The Artemus-Jellico Railroad made Kay Jay into more than a hollow settlement. Modern summaries based on Elmer G. Sulzer’s railroad history describe a short but important coal railroad that left Artemus, crossed the Cumberland River near the mouth of Brush Creek, and ran 8.7 miles up Brush Creek to Lunsford, later Kay Jay. From there, the line continued toward Wheeler, while a branch ran west along Tye Fork toward Anchor. Stations along the route included Trosper, Bays, Warren, Lunsford or Kay Jay, Wheeler, and Anchor.
This was not a grand passenger line built for distance. It was a coal road built for a creek valley. Its shape followed the needs of mines, camps, tipples, branches, and sidings. The line tied Kay Jay to Artemus and the wider Louisville and Nashville system, but it also tied the community’s future to the life of the Kentucky-Jellico operation.
Kentucky-Jellico and the Company Camp
The Kentucky-Jellico Mining Company stands at the center of Kay Jay’s twentieth-century history. One of the best surviving sources is the copied Kentucky-Jellico employment record collection held by the Knox Historical Museum. Those records cover 1940 to 1951 and include employee names, hire dates, nearest relatives or spouses, previous employers, and a reference to Kay Jay Local Union No. 6068.
The names in those records make the coal camp real. Cecil Alford was hired in 1940 after work with Happy Collieries. George Alford was hired in 1950 after work with Warren Coal Company. Walter D. Allen was hired in 1950 after work with Blue Diamond Coal Company. John Louis Baird was hired in 1941 after work with J. R. Ketchen Coal Company. Other entries list wives, relatives, and nearby employers, showing that Kay Jay was part of a broader coal labor network stretching across Knox, Bell, and surrounding counties.
A coal-camp directory later listed Kentucky Jellico Coal Company at Kayjay from 1933 to 1951 with 250 employees. That figure should be checked against state mine reports and company records, but it fits the general timeline found in the employment records and the railroad’s final years.
Reading Kay Jay Through Census, Maps, and Mine Records
The 1940 census is one of the strongest starting points for reconstructing Kay Jay household by household. The National Archives enumeration description for Knox County ED 61-5 included “Magisterial District 2 E of Brush Creek, Kayjay (part), Trosper, Wheeler (part).” NARA’s census finding aids explain that enumeration district maps and descriptions were used to define the areas assigned to census takers. For Kay Jay, that means the 1940 census can be used to trace miners, wives, children, boarders, widows, occupations, and migration patterns in the coal camp period.
USGS maps add another layer. The USGS Store identifies the Kayjay 7.5-minute historical topographic map as a 1:24,000 scale map with a 1959 survey date, and it notes the quadrangle as formerly Davisburg. The USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection preserves older printed maps as high-resolution digital files, which makes them valuable for comparing roads, streams, settlement names, cemeteries, and industrial traces across time.
The geology also mattered. In 1978, the U.S. Geological Survey published Charles L. Rice and Edwin K. Maughan’s “Geologic Map of the Kayjay Quadrangle and Part of the Fork Ridge Quadrangle, Bell and Knox Counties, Kentucky” as Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-1505. That map is a technical source, but it belongs in any serious Kay Jay history because the community’s rise depended on the coal-bearing geology of the Brush Creek area.
The Kentucky Mine Mapping system is another essential source. The state says its Mine Map Repository holds more than 175,000 paper coal mine maps and 183,000 mine records, with maps mostly from 1948 forward and data reaching back to 1884. The state also warns that older maps may not be directly downloadable and may require a records request. For Kay Jay, that means some of the best evidence for mine openings, mine workings, and closed entries may still be in state files rather than on a public web page.
The End of the Railroad
The end of Kay Jay’s railroad era came when the mine could no longer sustain the line. Railroad histories report that passenger service declined after a hard-surfaced road was completed in 1939. Passenger trains were discontinued in 1941. In 1945, the branch from Lunsford to Anchor was abandoned. Then, on April 1, 1952, Kentucky-Jellico notified the railroad that its mine was closing. The Artemus-Jellico Railroad applied for abandonment on June 3, 1952, received approval on July 29, stopped operating on November 1, and was dismantled by the end of March 1953.
That sequence shows how closely the community, railroad, and mine were bound together. When coal traffic ended, the railroad had little reason to remain. Yet the community did not vanish when the tracks came up. Like many coal camps in Appalachia, Kay Jay became a place where the industrial frame disappeared before the people did.
Floodwater in the Valley
Kay Jay’s later history has also been shaped by water. The same narrow valley that made the railroad route possible also made the community vulnerable to flash flooding. In 2011, Christian Appalachian Project described KayJay and Warren Camp as early coal mine camps devastated by a June 19 and 20 downburst. The report described a wall of water that pushed homes from their foundations and killed one resident when a mobile home was swept into a bridge. The National Weather Service also identified Kayjay as one of the hardest hit communities in the June 20, 2011 flash flood.
On July 7, 2019, another flash flood tore through the Kay Jay community. Knox County News reported that rain fell in as little as thirty minutes, damaging homes and roads, knocking out power, and leaving roads impassable. The Knox County judge-executive declared a state of emergency that day, and WKYT later reported that seventeen homes were underwater or had water damage.
Those floods belong to the history of Kay Jay because they show the community after coal. The company town became a road community. The railroad bed and mine works became memory. Families remained in the valley, still facing the geography that had shaped the place from the beginning.
Why Kay Jay Matters
Kay Jay’s history is not only the story of a mine opening and closing. It is the story of how a company name replaced an older place name, how a short railroad shaped the daily geography of Brush Creek, how miners moved among coal companies, how family names entered company records, and how a community continued after the industry that named it had gone.
The surviving records are scattered. Some are in post-office manuscripts. Some are in census schedules. Some are in state mine maps, USGS quadrangles, Knox Historical Museum employment records, road records, newspapers, flood reports, and railroad histories. Put together, they show Kay Jay as more than a former coal camp. They show it as a Knox County community built from work, kinship, danger, loss, and repeated rebuilding.
Sources & Further Reading
Knox Historical Museum. “Employment Records from the Old Kentucky-Jellico Mining Company.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://knoxhistoricalmuseum.org/history/of-knox-county-kentucky/coal-mining-history/employment-records-from-the-old-kentucky-jellico-mining-company.html
Knox Historical Museum. “Coal Mining History.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://knoxhistoricalmuseum.org/history/of-knox-county-kentucky/coal-mining-history.html
Rennick, Robert M. “Knox County Post Offices.” Morehead State University, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1385&context=kentucky_county_histories
Rice, Charles L., and Edwin K. Maughan. “Geologic Map of the Kayjay Quadrangle and Part of the Fork Ridge Quadrangle, Bell and Knox Counties, Kentucky.” U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-1505, 1978. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/gq1505
Maughan, Edwin K. “Geologic Map of the Kayjay Quadrangle and Part of the Fork Ridge Quadrangle, Bell and Knox Counties, Kentucky.” U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 73-375, 1972. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/ofr73375
Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet. “Kentucky Mine Mapping Information System.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://minemaps.ky.gov/
Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet. “Interactive Maps.” Kentucky Mine Mapping Information System. Accessed May 19, 2026. https://minemaps.ky.gov/Maps/InteractiveMaps
Kentucky Geological Survey. “KGS Annual Reports.” University of Kentucky. Accessed May 19, 2026. https://kygs.uky.edu/pubs/annual-reports
Kentucky Department of Mines and Minerals. Annual Report. HathiTrust Digital Library. Accessed May 19, 2026. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006206733
U.S. Census Bureau. “1940 Census Enumeration District Descriptions, Kentucky, Knox County, ED 61-1 through ED 61-5.” National Archives and Records Administration. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1940_Census_Enumeration_District_Descriptions_-_Kentucky_-_Knox_County_-_ED_61-1,_ED_61-2,_ED_61-3,_ED_61-4,_ED_61-5_-_NARA_-_5862836.jpg
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Records.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940
National Archives and Records Administration. “1950 Census.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://1950census.archives.gov/
FamilySearch. “United States Census, 1940.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/collection/2000219
FamilySearch. “United States Census, 1950.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/collection/4464515
U.S. Postal Service. “Postmaster Finder.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/
U.S. Postal Service. “Postmasters by City.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/postmasters-by-city.htm
U.S. Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
U.S. Geological Survey. “Download GNIS Data.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-geographic-names/download-gnis-data
Kentucky Geographic Network. “Kentucky Geographic Names Information System.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://opengisdata.ky.gov/datasets/ky-geographic-names-information-system-gnis
U.S. Geological Survey. “Kayjay, Kentucky 7.5-Minute Topographic Quadrangle.” USGS Store. Accessed May 19, 2026. https://store.usgs.gov/product/60373
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Knox County State Primary Road System.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/State%20Primary%20Road%20System%20Lists/knox.pdf
Sulzer, Elmer G. “An Abandoned Kentucky Railroad: The Artemus-Jellico R. R.” Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin, no. 108, April 1963.
Abandoned Online. “Artemus-Jellico Railroad.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://abandonedonline.net/location/artemus-jellico-railroad/
KYGenWeb. “Coal Mines in Knox County Kentucky.” Compiled from Dodrill’s 10,000 Coal Company Stores. Accessed May 19, 2026. https://kygenweb.net/knox/Coal-Mines/mines.html
Coal Education. “Knox County, Kentucky Coal Camps.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://www.coaleducation.org/coalhistory/coaltowns/coalcamps/knox_county.htm
Kentucky Heritage Council. “Cultural Historic Survey Reports.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://heritage.ky.gov/_layouts/15/download.aspx?SourceUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fheritage.ky.gov%2Fcompliance%2FDocuments%2FCHS+Reports+2023_March.xlsx
Knox County News. “Flash Flood in Kay Jay Community Damages Homes and Roads.” July 8, 2019. https://www.knoxky.com/flash-flood-in-kay-jay-community-damages-homes-and-roads/
Knox County News. “Knox County Declared in a State of Emergency by Judge-Executive Mike Mitchell.” July 8, 2019. https://www.knoxky.com/knox-county-declared-in-a-state-of-emergency-by-judge-executive-mike-mitchell/
Pendleton, Phil. “More Than a Dozen Knox County Homes Impacted by Flash Flooding.” WKYT, July 8, 2019. https://www.wkyt.com/content/news/More-than-a-dozen-Knox-County-homes-impacted-by-flash-flooding-512426642.html
WYMT Staff. “Crews Help People Out of Homes During Flooding.” WYMT, July 7, 2019. https://www.wymt.com/content/news/Crews-helping-people-out-of-homes-during-flooding-512324462.html
Christian Appalachian Project. “Knox County Flood Relief.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://www.christianapp.org/articles/knox-county-flood-relief
Author Note: Kay Jay is one of those Knox County communities where a railroad, a coal company, and a creek valley all shaped the same story. I wrote this as a reminder that even when the mine closes and the tracks disappear, the community history remains.