Appalachian Community Histories – Lake, Laurel County: The Small Post Office Community Named for a Pond
In eastern Laurel County, where KY 80 runs toward the Clay County line, the old community name Lake still lingers on maps, cemetery records, and local memory. It was never a large town. It did not grow into a railroad center, a courthouse seat, or a coal camp with a famous name. Lake belonged to a quieter kind of Appalachian history, the kind built around a country store, a post office, a school, a church, a family farm, and a landmark ordinary enough that outsiders might miss it.
The name came from water. Kentucky place-name scholar Robert M. Rennick identified Lake as an extinct post office on KY 80 about ten miles east of London, named for a large pond on a Petree farm. One of Rennick’s Laurel County summaries identifies the first postmaster-storekeeper as John Petree, while his post office file preserves another version that ties the name to storekeeper George Petree’s farm and says the name was submitted by his daughter Sallie, later Mrs. Deaton. Taken together, the records point to the same local origin. Before Lake was a map label, it was a pond known to the families who lived near it.
The Post Office That Made a Community Visible
For small rural communities, a post office was often the thing that made a place official. A store might serve nearby farms for years, but once mail came through under a local name, that name began appearing in ledgers, maps, postal guides, and family letters. The National Archives describes Post Office site-location reports as records used in establishing new post offices and recording name or location changes. These reports often asked for the county and state, nearby mail routes, roads, streams, rivers, canals, railroads, and sometimes included sketch maps drawn or annotated by the postmaster.
That matters for Lake because its strongest primary trail runs through the old Post Office Department records. The Laurel County material is on National Archives Microfilm M1126, Roll 221, covering Kentucky counties from Laurel to Lawrence. Those records are exactly the kind that can help place a vanished rural office in relation to roads, creeks, and neighboring communities.
A Lake post office would have meant more than stamps and letters. It would have been a meeting point. Farmers stopped there for mail, supplies, news, election talk, road talk, and family messages. In a countryside where distance was measured by hills, creek crossings, mud, and wagon time, a small office could turn a farm settlement into a named community.
Lake on the Map
Lake’s presence was not only postal. It also appears in geographic and cartographic records. The federal Geographic Names Information System is the national repository for domestic geographic names, and USGS explains that GNIS records official feature names, locations, feature classes, map references, and coordinates.
GNIS-derived map listings identify Lake as a populated place in Laurel County with Feature ID 513187, coordinates 37.0895342, -83.8854804, an elevation of about 1,207 feet, and a placement on the Blackwater USGS 7.5-minute quadrangle. That puts Lake among the small east Laurel County places near Bush, Marydell, Sasser, Camp Branch, and the roads leading toward the county line.
The name was also visible in print by the early twentieth century. A 1911 Rand McNally map of Laurel County lists Lake among the county’s communities, along with places such as Bush, Marydell, Blackwater, Sasser, Cane Creek, Pittsburg, London, Lily, Keavy, and others. For a small place, appearing on a county map was a kind of survival. It meant the name had become useful enough for travelers, merchants, mapmakers, and residents to recognize.
School, Church, Cemetery, and Family Ground
Lake was also tied to the institutions that held rural communities together. Lake School appears in topographic place listings as a Laurel County school at 37.092312, -83.872424, with an elevation of about 1,233 feet, on the Hima USGS 1:24,000 quadrangle. That school record is a reminder that Lake was not just a postal label. Children walked or rode from nearby farms to a school that carried the community name.
Church and cemetery records point in the same direction. Freedom Cemetery, Riley Gregory Cemetery, York Cemetery, and other burial grounds around Lake preserve surnames that tell the human story better than any road map can. John Petree, connected in the place-name tradition to Lake’s origin, is listed in cemetery records as born in 1845, died in 1938 at Lake, Laurel County, and buried in Freedom Cemetery. Such records should be checked against stones, death certificates, deeds, and church books, but they are valuable leads for reconstructing the families who made Lake a community.
In Appalachian communities, cemeteries often outlast stores and schools. A post office may close. A school may consolidate. A country store may disappear from the roadside. But the cemetery keeps the names, and the names keep pointing back to the settlement.
A Farm Community in Eastern Laurel County
The land around Lake belonged to a rural Laurel County world of farms, ponds, branches, wagon roads, and later state highways. Laurel County itself was formed in 1825 from parts of Clay, Rockcastle, Whitley, and Knox counties. The Kentucky Historical Society marker program notes that the county was named for the laurel shrubs that impressed early pioneers, while the state’s own county profile gives the same formation history and connection to the Laurel River.
Lake’s story fits that larger county pattern. It was not created by a single factory or mine. It grew from settlement, landholding, postal service, family networks, and the practical need for local gathering places. In places like eastern Laurel County, a pond could name a post office, a post office could name a community, and a community name could remain long after the original daily routines changed.
Federal and state records help explain the landscape around it. USGS maps show the terrain and named features. Kentucky Transportation Cabinet maps show the modern road system that now frames the old communities of eastern Laurel County. Local records at the Laurel County Clerk’s office and Laurel County PVA can help trace the Petree land, store sites, road frontage, and later property transfers. The Laurel County Historical Society, with maps, publications, photographs, and local research collections, remains one of the best places to connect these official records to community memory.
Why Lake Still Matters
Lake matters because Appalachian history is not only the story of county seats, battlefields, mines, courthouses, and famous people. It is also the story of small places that held a few dozen families together through mail routes, schools, churches, cemeteries, and country roads.
The old Lake post office gave a name to a local landscape. The Petree pond gave that name its meaning. The school carried it forward for children. The cemeteries preserved the families. The maps fixed it in print. Even now, when many people drive past such places without noticing them, Lake remains part of Laurel County’s historical geography.
To understand Lake is to understand how many Appalachian communities were made. They began with land and water, then a family name, then a store, then a mail route, then a school, then a cemetery full of proof that people stayed, worked, worshiped, raised children, buried kin, and called the place home.
Sources & Further Reading
National Archives. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” National Archives. Accessed July 6, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
National Archives. “Post Office Department Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” Microfilm Publication M1126, Roll 221, Kentucky: Laurel-Lawrence. National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/post-offices/m1126.pdf
United States Postal Service. “Sources of Historical Information on Post Offices, Postal Employees, Mail Routes, and Mail Contractors.” United States Postal Service. Accessed July 6, 2026. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/pdf/sources-of-historical-information.pdf
Rennick, Robert M. “Laurel County.” Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1238&context=kentucky_county_histories
Rennick, Robert M. “Laurel County: Post Offices.” Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 1972. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/context/kentucky_county_histories/article/1386/viewcontent/Laurel_PostOffices.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” U.S. Geological Survey. Accessed July 6, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
U.S. Geological Survey. “Download GNIS Data.” U.S. Board on Geographic Names. Accessed July 6, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-geographic-names/download-gnis-data
MyTopo. “Lake, Kentucky.” GNIS Feature ID 513187. Accessed July 6, 2026. https://geo.mytopo.com/feature/kentucky/laurel/populated-place/513187/lake/
TopoQuest. “Lake School, Kentucky.” GNIS Feature ID 513189. Accessed July 6, 2026. https://topoquest.com/place/kentucky/school/lake-school/513189
U.S. Geological Survey. “topoView.” National Geologic Map Database. Accessed July 6, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
Rand McNally and Company. “Laurel County, Kentucky 1911 Map.” Reproduced by My Genealogy Hound. Accessed July 6, 2026. https://www.mygenealogyhound.com/maps/kentucky-maps/KY-Laurel-County-Kentucky-1911-Rand-McNally-map-London-Pittsburg-Lily.html
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Laurel County, Kentucky: State Primary Road System.” Last revised December 2024. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/SPRS%20Maps/Laurel.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Laurel County, Kentucky: County Road Series Map.” 2006. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/Maps/laurel_cmap.pdf
Laurel County Clerk. “Search Your Land Records Here.” Laurel County Clerk. Accessed July 6, 2026. https://laurelcountyclerk.ky.gov/search-your-land-records-here/
Laurel County Property Valuation Administrator. “Laurel County PVA.” Accessed July 6, 2026. https://laurelpva.com/
Clayton, C. F., and W. D. Nicholls. Land Utilization in Laurel County, Kentucky. USDA Technical Bulletin 289. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1932. https://www.econbiz.de/Record/land-utilization-in-laurel-county-ky-clayton/10010923016
Ross, James C. Soil Survey of Laurel and Rockcastle Counties, Kentucky. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service, 1981. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100888076
U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service. “Laurel County, Kentucky: 2022 Census of Agriculture County Profile.” 2024. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/Online_Resources/County_Profiles/Kentucky/cp21125.pdf
U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service. “Laurel County: Farms, Number, Acres, Value and Land Use, 1909–2017.” USDA NASS Kentucky Field Office. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Kentucky/Publications/State_Census_Summaries/Historical_Ag_Statistics/Laurel.pdf
Kentucky Historical Society. “Laurel County.” Historical Marker Database. Accessed July 6, 2026. https://history.ky.gov/markers/laurel-county
Laurel County Historical Society. “Maps.” Accessed July 6, 2026. https://www.laurelkyhistory.org/maps
Laurel County Historical Society. “Laurel County Historical Society.” Accessed July 6, 2026. https://www.laurelkyhistory.org/
FamilySearch. “Laurel County, Kentucky Genealogy.” FamilySearch Wiki. Updated May 19, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Laurel_County%2C_Kentucky_Genealogy
KYGenWeb. “Laurel County KY Genealogy.” Accessed July 6, 2026. https://kygenweb.net/laurel/
KYGenWeb. “Laurel County Cemetery Index.” Accessed July 6, 2026. https://kygenweb.net/laurel/cemetery/
KYGenWeb. “The Laurel County Civil War Page.” Accessed July 6, 2026. https://kygenweb.net/laurel/civilwar.html
Genealogy Trails. “Genealogy and History: Laurel County, Kentucky.” Accessed July 6, 2026. https://genealogytrails.com/ken/laurel/
Find a Grave. “John Petree.” Memorial ID 31869692. Accessed July 6, 2026. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/31869692/john-petree
Old Maps Online. “Old Maps of Laurel County, Kentucky.” Accessed July 6, 2026. https://www.oldmapsonline.org/en/Laurel_County%2C_Kentucky
Hammon, Neal O. “Boone’s Trace Through Laurel County.” The Filson Club Quarterly 42, no. 2, April 1968. https://www.boonetrace1775.com/History/Neal-Hammon/68_FCQ_Laurel.pdf
Author Note: Lake is one of those small Appalachian places that survives through maps, postal records, cemetery names, and family memory more than through large public monuments. This article is meant to preserve that local trail while pointing readers toward the records that can still deepen the story.