Appalachian Community Histories – Lickburg, Magoffin County: A Rural Community Recovered through Postal Records and Maps
Lickburg, Kentucky is one of those Appalachian communities whose history cannot be found in a single town book, courthouse monument, or collection of municipal records. It was never incorporated. It had no town council, courthouse square, or formally surveyed downtown. Its history survives instead in post office records, county maps, census schedules, land deeds, newspapers, cemeteries, road plans, and the memories of families who called the surrounding hills home.
Federal geographic records identify Lickburg as a populated place in Magoffin County at approximately 37.792869 north latitude and 83.085171 west longitude. The community sits at an elevation of about 856 feet and appears on the United States Geological Survey’s Salyersville North topographic quadrangle. Those coordinates mark only a point on the map. The historical community was broader, stretching through nearby roads, branches, farms, cemeteries, and family properties.
For nearly a century, the Lickburg post office gave that scattered settlement a public identity. It placed Lickburg in federal directories, commercial maps, newspaper correspondence, family letters, and the daily routines of residents who depended on the mail for news from beyond the mountains.
A Community in the Upper Licking Country
Magoffin County was created in 1860 from portions of Floyd, Johnson, and Morgan counties, with Salyersville designated as the county seat. The new county was named for Beriah Magoffin, who served as governor of Kentucky during the opening years of the Civil War. The county developed along the Licking River and the narrow valleys, branches, and ridges that fed into it.
Salyersville became the center of county government, business, and newspaper publication, but most Magoffin County residents did not live around the courthouse. They lived in smaller communities known by the names of creeks, schools, churches, stores, post offices, and prominent families.
Lickburg belonged to that older Appalachian pattern. It was a community without municipal boundaries, but its name carried meaning. A person could be described in a deed, obituary, marriage notice, or letter as being “of Lickburg,” and county residents would have understood the general place being described.
The origins of the name are not yet firmly documented in the available primary sources. The word “lick” commonly appeared in Kentucky place names near mineral or salt licks where animals gathered, but it would be unwise to assign that explanation to Lickburg without stronger local evidence. Robert M. Rennick’s Magoffin County place-name files and the original postal application records remain the best sources for determining whether the name came from a natural feature, a proposed post office name, or a local family tradition. Morehead State University preserves both a 1939 survey of Magoffin County place names and Rennick’s later county research collection.
The Post Office That Made Lickburg Official
The surviving research trail indicates that the Lickburg post office was established in 1892. That date should ultimately be checked against the federal postmaster appointment ledgers in National Archives Microfilm Publication M841, but the United States Official Postal Guide confirms that Lickburg was operating by July 1894.
In the 1894 guide, Lickburg appears in the official list of Magoffin County post offices alongside communities such as Falcon, Gapville, Gypsy, Hager, Hendricks, Ivyton, Lykins, Mary, Orchard, Salyersville, and Swampton. Its appearance was not an informal reference added by a local mapmaker. The guide was published under the authority of the United States Post Office Department and was intended to identify the nation’s functioning post offices.
Lickburg remained in the federal postal system into the twentieth century. The July 1916 United States Official Postal Guide continued to list Lickburg among the post offices of Kentucky, demonstrating that the community name had remained active for more than two decades after the 1894 listing.
A rural post office did far more than distribute letters. It might occupy part of a general store, a room in a family home, or a small purpose-built structure. The postmaster often became one of the most recognizable public figures in the neighborhood. Residents came there for letters, newspapers, money orders, government notices, catalogs, packages, and news carried from neighboring communities.
For families living along isolated roads and branches, mail connected Lickburg with Salyersville, Lexington, Cincinnati, and relatives who had moved into the coal camps or industrial cities. A post office also helped stabilize the community name. Once Lickburg appeared on envelopes, postal route maps, and federal directories, it became part of the nation’s official geography.
The Records Still Waiting in the National Archives
The most important unanswered questions about Lickburg may be found in the Post Office Department’s appointment and site-location records.
National Archives Microfilm Publication M841 contains records of postmaster appointments from 1832 through September 1971. A complete search under Lickburg should reveal the office’s postmasters, appointment dates, resignations, and possible interruptions in service. These records may also confirm the precise establishment date and show whether the office changed locations during its long history.
The Post Office Department’s site-location reports are equally valuable. Preserved as National Archives Microfilm Publication M1126, these records were created to help federal officials determine where post offices stood in relation to nearby roads, streams, communities, and postal routes. Many reports contain handwritten or annotated maps prepared by local postmasters.
A Lickburg site report could identify the post office’s distance from Salyersville, Falcon, Cyrus, Ivyton, or other neighboring offices. It might name a creek, road junction, store, mill, church, school, or property owner. It could also show whether the office moved from one building to another as postmasters changed.
Such records are especially important because the community did not have incorporated boundaries. The post office site was not necessarily the center of every place residents considered part of Lickburg, but it provides a documented point from which the surrounding settlement can be reconstructed.
Lickburg on the 1911 Map
By 1911, Lickburg had become established enough to appear on a Rand McNally map of Magoffin County. The map places it within a network of communities that included Cyrus, Ivyton, Lykins, Falcon, Salyersville, Edna, Gypsy, Hendricks, Sublett, Plutarch, and Wheelersburg.
The map matters because it shows that Lickburg was more than a postal name known only to federal clerks. It had become a useful geographic reference for travelers, businesses, and residents. Its location helped explain how the community related to neighboring settlements and to the roads leading toward the county seat.
Maps of this period did not record every house, church, school, or cemetery. They usually marked selected post offices and settlements that helped people navigate the county. Being included meant that Lickburg had achieved a recognizable place in Magoffin County’s public geography.
A Visit Recorded in the Kentucky Mountaineer
Newspapers provide a more personal glimpse of Lickburg. The July 12, 1912 issue of the Kentucky Mountaineer, published in Salyersville, included a local item mentioning a trip to Lickburg.
The reference is brief, but its casual nature is important. The newspaper did not need to explain where Lickburg was. The name could be used naturally in a report about local travel because readers already recognized it.
Community correspondence columns often provide some of the richest evidence for places like Lickburg. They recorded visits between families, illnesses, weddings, deaths, school events, church meetings, crops, road conditions, and trips into town. What appeared to editors as ordinary neighborhood news can now help historians reconstruct the social world of a rural community.
Further searches of the Kentucky Mountaineer, the Salyersville Herald, and the Salyersville Independent may reveal the names of Lickburg families, teachers, ministers, merchants, farmers, election officers, and postmasters. Court notices and estate advertisements may connect those names to land along nearby branches and roads.
Roads, Commerce, and the Connection to Salyersville
Lickburg depended on Salyersville for services that could not be provided locally. A Rand McNally Bankers Directory from the 1930s connected Lickburg with Salyersville, indicating that the county seat served as its banking and commercial center. A later directory summarized the relationship with the notation “Lickburg to Salyersville.”
That small notation describes an important part of rural life. Residents might receive mail and purchase basic goods near home, but banking, court business, major purchases, medical services, and newspaper offices were concentrated in Salyersville.
The road between Lickburg and the surrounding communities therefore carried more than ordinary traffic. It carried farm products, store goods, mail sacks, schoolchildren, courthouse visitors, ministers, physicians, election materials, and families traveling between homes.
State highway maps from 1937 and 1950 can help document how those routes changed. Comparing them with the 1911 map and the 1962 Salyersville North quadrangle may reveal when local roads were improved, rerouted, or connected to the expanding state highway system.
Lickburg and Falcon Road
Modern state records continue to preserve the Lickburg name through the transportation network. Kentucky Route 1081 has been officially described in state contracting records as Lickburg-Falcon Road. A 2014 Kentucky Transportation Cabinet proposal covered approximately seven miles of the route, extending toward Kentucky Route 40 near Falcon.
Kentucky Route 3334 also begins near Lickburg and connects with Kentucky Route 1081. These numbered routes follow the same basic Appalachian logic that shaped earlier travel. Roads move through valleys and creek corridors where the terrain permits, then climb or curve around the ridges that divide one branch from another.
The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s Magoffin County State Primary Road System map, revised in June 2022, continues to label Lickburg near Cyrus and between the general areas of Falcon, Edna, Harper, Maggard, and other northern Magoffin County communities.
The persistence of the name on a twenty-first-century government map is significant. The post office may be gone, but Lickburg has not disappeared from the county’s geography.
The Land Beneath the Community
The physical landscape explains much about Lickburg’s history. The community lies within the rugged terrain of eastern Kentucky, where narrow stream valleys provided the most practical places for houses, farms, roads, schools, and stores. Ridges separated neighboring settlements that might appear close on a map but were historically connected by winding roads.
The Salyersville North topographic quadrangle places Lickburg within this pattern of branches, slopes, hollows, and neighboring settlements. The Kentucky Geological Survey’s planning map also preserves Lickburg as a named community within a county shaped by steep slopes, sandstone ridges, coal-bearing formations, oil and gas resources, stream valleys, and landslide hazards.
The location influenced daily life. Flat farmland was limited. Homes and gardens occupied usable ground along the valleys. Cemeteries were often placed on higher land above flood-prone bottoms. Roads followed waterways whenever possible, while travel across ridges could be slow and difficult.
This geography helps explain why the post office mattered so much. In a landscape where distance could not be measured by straight lines alone, a local place for receiving mail saved residents repeated journeys into Salyersville.
The Lickburg Post Office in 1978
One of the most valuable surviving visual records of the community was created in May 1978, when photographer J. Gallagher documented the Lickburg post office.
The photograph belongs to a larger Post Mark Collectors Club collection showing thirty-five Magoffin County post offices as they appeared that month. The collection includes communities such as Bethanna, Burning Fork, Cisco, Edna, Elsie, Falcon, Flat Fork, Foraker, Fredville, Fritz, Gapville, Gunlock, Gypsy, Harper, Hendricks, Ivyton, Lickburg, and Logville.
Taken together, the photographs preserve a remarkable moment in the county’s history. Magoffin County still possessed a wide network of small rural post offices, many of which would close during the following decades. Each building represented a community name, a postal route, and a gathering place that had survived into the late twentieth century.
For Lickburg, the photograph supplies something maps and postal guides cannot. It documents a physical place where residents collected their mail and where the community name was displayed for the public.
The Closing of the Post Office
The Post Mark Collectors Club record states that the Lickburg post office was discontinued on March 6, 1986. The photograph had been taken less than eight years earlier.
The closing ended a postal history that had lasted for roughly ninety-four years if the reported 1892 establishment date is confirmed. Generations of Lickburg families had received letters, newspapers, packages, government forms, and family news through the office.
Its discontinuance did not mean that the community disappeared. Mail service could be transferred to another office, and residents could continue using nearby roads, churches, cemeteries, and family names. What changed was the official postal independence of Lickburg.
The closing was part of a broader transformation in rural America. Improved highways, automobiles, centralized mail processing, and rural delivery reduced the need for a post office in every small settlement. The practical reasons were understandable, but the cultural loss was real. When a post office closed, a community lost one of the few institutions that publicly carried its name.
Families and Cemeteries
The fullest history of Lickburg will ultimately be a history of its families. Federal census schedules from 1900 through 1950 can identify households living near the community, although residents may appear under a magisterial district, voting precinct, or enumeration district rather than beneath a separate Lickburg heading.
Those records can reveal occupations, farm ownership, school attendance, literacy, family relationships, birthplaces, and neighboring households. When combined with enumeration maps, deeds, tax books, and death certificates, they may show which families lived along the roads and branches associated with Lickburg.
Online cemetery compilations associate Adams Cemetery, Brushy Fork Cemetery, David M. Cooper Cemetery, Ward Cemetery, and Whitt Cemetery with the Lickburg area. These listings should be checked against gravestone photographs, death certificates, funeral records, deeds, and physical surveys, but they provide useful starting points for identifying local family networks.
Magoffin County deed books may also identify school lots, church property, store sites, family cemeteries, mineral rights, and older road names. Probate inventories could reveal farm equipment, livestock, household goods, store accounts, or property connected with former postmasters.
Searching for Lickburg’s Schools and Churches
The surviving published record does not yet provide a complete history of Lickburg’s schools or churches. That absence should not be mistaken for evidence that they did not exist.
Rural institutions were often known by the name of a branch, congregation, family, or school district rather than by the nearest post office. A school serving Lickburg families might appear in county records under a district number or another neighborhood name. A church might be identified by its denomination or creek location.
Magoffin County school-board minutes, school census records, teacher lists, and transportation records may reveal which schools served Lickburg children. Church minutes, Baptist association proceedings, funeral records, and cemetery inscriptions may provide another record of the community’s families.
These sources could add the names and experiences missing from maps. They could identify the teachers who worked in local schools, the ministers who conducted funerals and revivals, and the families whose land supported community institutions.
Remembering Lickburg
Lickburg did not need incorporation to be a real community. It existed wherever its residents used the name to describe home. It existed on envelopes, road maps, death certificates, deeds, newspaper columns, and directions given between neighbors.
The official record now tells part of that story. Lickburg was a recognized post office by July 1894. It remained active in 1916. It appeared on a 1911 county map and in a 1912 Salyersville newspaper. It was connected commercially with Salyersville, preserved on state highway and federal topographic maps, photographed in 1978, and left the postal system in 1986.
Modern maps still carry the name. Kentucky continues to recognize Lickburg as a populated place and as part of the road geography of Magoffin County. That survival matters because many Appalachian communities disappear from public memory after their schools consolidate, stores close, and post offices are discontinued.
Lickburg’s history is not complete, but it is recoverable. The records are scattered because the community itself was scattered through the hills. Bringing postal files, maps, newspapers, deeds, censuses, cemeteries, photographs, and family stories together allows the place to emerge again.
Lickburg was more than a dot printed beside a road. It was a mailing place, a neighborhood, a network of families, and part of the lived landscape of Magoffin County.
Sources & Further Reading
Adkison, W. L., and J. E. Johnston. Geology of the Salyersville North Quadrangle, Kentucky. Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-276. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1964. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/gq276
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” Accessed July 12, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Conley, Helen Jo. “Magoffin County: Salyersville.” County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 1970. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/
FamilySearch. “Magoffin County, Kentucky Genealogy.” Last modified May 19, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Magoffin_County%2C_Kentucky_Genealogy
Gallagher, John. “Lickburg, KY Post Office.” Photograph, May 1978. Post Mark Collectors Club Post Office Photo Collection. https://www.flickr.com/photos/postoffices/34998289281/in/album-72157684455410483
Gallagher, John. “Magoffin County, Kentucky, 1978.” Photograph album. Post Mark Collectors Club Post Office Photo Collection. https://www.flickr.com/photos/postoffices/albums/72157684455410483/
Kalish, Evan. “The Lost Post Offices of Magoffin County, Kentucky.” Postlandia, August 2, 2017. https://blog.evankalish.com/2017/08/lost-post-offices-of-magoffin-county-ky.html
Kentucky Department of Highways. General Highway Map, Magoffin County, Kentucky. Frankfort: Kentucky Department of Highways, 1937.
Kentucky Department of Highways. General Highway Map, Magoffin County, Kentucky. Frankfort: Kentucky Department of Highways, 1950.
Kentucky Geological Survey. Generalized Geologic Map for Land-Use Planning: Magoffin County, Kentucky. Map and Chart 175, Series XII. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2010. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/mc175_12.pdf
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Georeferenced Map Imagery, Maps, and GIS Products.” Accessed July 12, 2026. https://www.uky.edu/KGS/gis/mapimages.htm
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. State Primary Road System: Magoffin County, Kentucky. Revised June 2022. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/SPRS%20Maps/Magoffin.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Magoffin County State Primary Road System. Revised September 17, 2025. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/State%20Primary%20Road%20System%20Lists/Magoffin.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Lickburg-Falcon Road, Kentucky Route 1081, Magoffin County. Construction proposal. Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, 2014. https://transportation.ky.gov/Construction-Procurement/Proposals/305-MAGOFFIN-14-2311.pdf
Kentucky Mountaineer. “Local News.” Salyersville, Kentucky, July 12, 1912. https://archive.org/download/xt708k74v104/xt708k74v104.pdf
Magoffin County Government. “Magoffin County, Kentucky.” Accessed July 12, 2026. https://magoffincounty.ky.gov/
Magoffin County Government. “Elected Officials.” Accessed July 12, 2026. https://magoffincounty.ky.gov/elected-officials/Pages/Elected-Officials.aspx
National Archives and Records Administration. “Census Records.” Accessed July 12, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census
National Archives and Records Administration. “Enumeration District Maps for the Twelfth through Sixteenth Censuses of the United States, 1900–1940.” Accessed July 12, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/maps
National Archives and Records Administration. Post Office Department Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950. National Archives Microfilm Publication M1126. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Service. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/post-offices/m1126.pdf
National Archives and Records Administration. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971. National Archives Microfilm Publication M841. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Service. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Records.” Last reviewed January 21, 2021. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
Rand McNally and Company. “Magoffin County, Kentucky.” Map. In Commercial Atlas of America. Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1911. https://www.mygenealogyhound.com/maps/kentucky-maps/KY-Magoffin-County-Kentucky-1911-Rand-McNally-map-Salyersville-Hendricks-Edna.html
Rand McNally and Company. Rand McNally Bankers Directory. Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1939. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/rand-mcnally-bankers-directory-105/final-1939-edition-598431
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813115035/kentucky-place-names/
Rennick, Robert M. “Magoffin County: Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2016. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/102/
United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service. Soil Survey of Magoffin and Morgan Counties, Kentucky. Washington, DC: Natural Resources Conservation Service, 2002. https://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/
United States Geological Survey. Salyersville North, Kentucky. 7.5-Minute Topographic Quadrangle. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1962. https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/kentucky/
United States Geological Survey. “TopoView.” National Geologic Map Database. Accessed July 12, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
United States Post Office Department. United States Official Postal Guide. July 1894. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1894. https://archive.org/details/unitedstatesoffi1894unit
United States Post Office Department. United States Official Postal Guide. July 1916. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1916. https://archive.org/details/unitedstatesoffi1916unit
Works Progress Administration and Historical Records Survey. “Magoffin County.” County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 1936. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/44/
Works Progress Administration and Robert M. Rennick. “Magoffin County: Place Names.” County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 1939. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/256/
Author Note: Lickburg’s history survives through postal guides, government maps, newspapers, family records, cemeteries, and the memories of those who knew the community. Readers with photographs, postmarks, school records, church histories, or family stories connected to Lickburg are invited to help preserve its history.