Appalachian Community Histories – Paintsville, Johnson County: Paint Lick Station, Civil War, Coal, and the Making of a Regional Center
Paintsville occupies one of the most important crossroads in the history of Kentucky’s Big Sandy Valley. Long before paved highways cut through Johnson County, the place that became Paintsville stood where Paint Creek entered the Levisa Fork, a natural meeting point between the river valley and the mountain country stretching westward toward the interior of Kentucky.
Its history can also be documented more thoroughly than that of many eastern Kentucky communities. Newspapers, deeds, court books, federal censuses, military reports, Sanborn maps, oral histories, photographs, state records, and historic resource surveys preserve different pieces of Paintsville’s development from an eighteenth-century frontier landscape into the political and commercial center of Johnson County. Pasted markdown
That documentary record reveals several different Paintsvilles. There was the frontier trading place known as Paint Lick, the courthouse town dependent upon river traffic, the occupied Civil War community where James A. Garfield established his headquarters, the prosperous coal era town transformed by John C. C. Mayo and the railroad, and the twentieth century regional center whose schools, hospitals, government buildings, and businesses served families from across the surrounding mountains.
Before Paintsville Had a Name
The documentary history of the area begins well before the establishment of Paintsville itself.
In 1750, Dr. Thomas Walker led an expedition through the Appalachian interior on behalf of the Loyal Company. His journal records the extraordinary difficulty of traveling through what is now eastern Kentucky. Walker and his companions crossed steep ridges, followed buffalo paths, struggled through laurel thickets, encountered signs of Indigenous occupation, and repeatedly found coal exposed along streams and hillsides.
On June 6, Walker recorded following a fast-moving stream that he called “Rapid Creek.” The next day his party crossed the creek and followed it for about twelve miles until reaching a river approximately one hundred yards wide, which they called the Louisa River. An editor of Walker’s journal later identified Rapid Creek as Paint Creek, placing this episode within the immediate geographical story of Paintsville.
Later Kentucky historical interpretation went farther, identifying Walker’s camp with the present Paintsville area. A Kentucky Historical Society marker states that Walker reached the site on June 7, 1750. The distinction between the original document and later interpretation is important. Walker’s surviving journal records the creek and river but does not use the name Paintsville, which did not yet exist.
The landscape Walker entered was not empty. His journal repeatedly described Indigenous roads, abandoned dwellings, marked trees, hunting grounds, and other evidence that Native peoples had used and traveled through the Appalachian interior long before permanent Euro-American settlement. The river valleys and salt licks that later attracted traders and settlers were already part of older networks of movement.
Paint Lick and the Beginning of a Town
Permanent Euro-American settlement in what became Johnson County accelerated after the American Revolution.
The National Park Service identifies Harmon’s Station, established in 1787 near what later became Hager Hill, as the first permanent settlement in present Johnson County. Three years later, Colonel John Preston and other Virginia land speculators established a trading station at the future site of Paintsville. The settlement was called Paint Lick.
Kentucky’s Paintsville historical marker consequently describes the community as one of eastern Kentucky’s earliest settlements and dates Paint Lick Station to 1790.
At this stage, Paint Lick was not yet the compact courthouse town that later generations would recognize. Settlement followed the limited bottomland beside Paint Creek and the Levisa Fork, while transportation depended upon waterways, trails, and crude roads threading through the mountains.
A more recognizable town began to emerge under the Reverend Henry Dixon.
The National Park Service records that Dixon acquired land around the trading station in 1820 and developed a gristmill along Paint Creek. Other businessmen joined him, and by about 1830 the settlement included a gristmill, sawmill, carding machine, and additional commercial activity. In 1826 Dixon laid out three rows of lots in the bottomland, helping establish the physical pattern from which downtown Paintsville developed.
The local post office provides another sign of the community’s development. Johnson County’s official history dates the establishment of a post office called Paint Creek to April 24, 1824. The legislature formally established Paintsville as a town in 1834, although later records and historical markers differ over which date should be described as its incorporation. The National Park Service historic resources survey uses 1834, while a later Kentucky historical marker gives 1872 for incorporation and notes that municipal government was older. Those differences illustrate why the legislative acts and contemporary local records are especially important when reconstructing Paintsville’s legal history.
Becoming the Seat of Johnson County
Paintsville’s importance increased dramatically when Kentucky created Johnson County.
The Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives records that Johnson County was created in 1843 from portions of Floyd, Lawrence, and Morgan counties, becoming Kentucky’s ninety-seventh county. Paintsville was selected as the county seat. County government began conducting business the following year, and a courthouse was soon constructed in town.
The courthouse changed Paintsville’s place in the surrounding mountains.
Residents who needed to record deeds, settle estates, obtain licenses, appear in court, pay taxes, or participate in county government now had reason to travel to Paintsville. Merchants, lawyers, physicians, craftsmen, hotel keepers, and other professionals could build businesses around the stream of people coming into the county seat.
Yet transportation remained difficult.
The Levisa Fork offered Paintsville its most practical connection with outside markets. Kentucky appropriated money for improvements to the river during the 1840s, but shifting sandbars, debris, changing water levels, and narrow channels made dependable navigation difficult. Timbermen learned to use winter and spring floods, floating logs toward Catlettsburg and the Ohio River. Farm products and mountain commodities including hides, wool, chestnuts, livestock, herbs, feathers, sorghum, and dried foods also moved toward larger markets. Manufactured goods, salt, coffee, kerosene, and other merchandise came back upstream.
Steamboats gradually transformed this trade. Local accounts date steamboat travel on the Big Sandy as early as the late 1830s, while the National Park Service identifies about 1850 as the beginning of the region’s steamboat age. Neither interpretation changes the larger point. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Paintsville had become a river-oriented courthouse and market town whose economy depended heavily upon the Levisa Fork.
Paintsville on the Eve of the Civil War
Paintsville remained small by modern standards.
The National Park Service estimated its population at about 120 in 1850 and approximately 200 in 1860. General stores increasingly replaced the earlier frontier trading establishments, and the courthouse reinforced the town’s political importance even though most Johnson County residents continued to live on farms scattered through creek valleys and hollows.
Coal was already present in the local economy. The National Park Service records the organization of a Johnson County coal company in 1845, with some coal transported by river, but the transportation system was not yet capable of supporting the enormous industrial operations that would arrive during the next century.
The Civil War interrupted this gradual development.
Johnson County stood in a strategically important section of the Big Sandy Valley. The river and the roads beside it provided one of the few practical military corridors through eastern Kentucky, connecting northeastern Kentucky with the mountain country around Prestonsburg and routes leading toward Virginia.
By the winter of 1861 and 1862, Confederate troops commanded by Brigadier General Humphrey Marshall had established positions around Paintsville and the surrounding hills. Their presence brought the national conflict directly into the county seat.
James A. Garfield Comes to Paintsville
The Union response placed one of the future presidents of the United States in Paintsville.
Colonel James A. Garfield advanced southward through the Big Sandy Valley with orders to dislodge Marshall’s Confederate force. Garfield reached the Paintsville area on January 6, 1862. Marshall had constructed strong defenses around Hager Hill, but the possibility of a Union movement against his flank and rear made the position increasingly dangerous. He abandoned his works and retreated south toward Prestonsburg.
Garfield’s own correspondence preserves the story with unusual immediacy.
Writing from Paintsville on January 8, he reported that Confederate troops had occupied the southern bank of Paint Creek before withdrawing. According to Garfield, Marshall’s retreating troops destroyed wagons and supplies before leaving their fortified position. Garfield sent sketches of the defenses to his superiors and prepared to continue the pursuit.
Four days after the Battle of Middle Creek, Garfield issued a proclamation from his Paintsville headquarters to the “Citizens of the Sandy Valley.” He promised government protection to civilians who were not assisting Confederate forces while demanding surrender from those actively bearing arms against the United States. The document shows that Union commanders understood the campaign as something larger than a battlefield operation. They were also attempting to establish political authority over a divided mountain population.
Paintsville became the location of Camp Buell, where Garfield continued corresponding with his superiors. A January 30 report described almost continuous rain, ruined wagon roads, a swollen river, and the difficulty of supplying soldiers through the Big Sandy Valley. For residents accustomed to difficult transportation, the military occupation magnified problems already familiar to generations of travelers.
The war did not disappear after Marshall’s retreat. Guerrilla activity continued, and the National Park Service records that county officials moved public records to Flat Gap for protection during the conflict. Fighting returned to Paintsville on April 13, 1864, when Confederate troops under Lieutenant Colonel Ezekiel F. Clay attacked Union forces commanded by Colonel George W. Gallup. The Union force repulsed the attack before continuing operations toward Half Mountain near Salyersville.
A Courthouse Town After the War
Paintsville emerged from the Civil War still relatively small, but its role as Johnson County’s governmental and commercial center was firmly established.
Education became increasingly visible in the town. The National Park Service records Paintsville’s first dedicated school building as a frame structure erected along Paint Creek in 1867. By the end of the century, the town also had private schools, while churches and civic institutions became increasingly prominent parts of community life.
Timber transformed the regional economy during the late nineteenth century. Demand from growing industrial cities created a market for Appalachian hardwoods, and the Big Sandy drainage provided a route for logs moving toward the Ohio River. Paintsville merchants benefited from the trade, but timber was only a preview of the economic transformation waiting beneath the mountains.
Coal would change the scale of everything.
John C. C. Mayo and a New Paintsville
No individual became more closely associated with Paintsville’s coal era transformation than John Caldwell Calhoun Mayo.
Mayo had begun his career as a teacher, but he recognized the commercial value of eastern Kentucky’s coal and mineral deposits. The Kentucky Historical Society’s Mayo collection describes him purchasing land and mineral rights while still earning a teacher’s salary, then acting as an intermediary between local landowners and outside coal and iron interests. Eventually he became associated with major mineral and coal corporations and helped direct northeastern investment into the Big Sandy region.
His rise coincided with the arrival of the railroad.
Passenger trains were reaching Paintsville by 1904, and the National Park Service records the completion of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad line through Johnson County in 1905. Reliable rail transportation did what the unpredictable Levisa Fork never could. Coal could now move from eastern Kentucky mines toward national markets on an industrial scale.
Paintsville changed rapidly.
Telephone service appeared in 1906. A municipal street paving program followed in 1908 and 1909. By 1908 residents had access to municipal water and electricity. A bridge replaced the old ferry crossing Paint Creek. The town that had depended upon riverboats and muddy roads was becoming an early twentieth century commercial center connected by rail, wire, paved streets, and public utilities.
The physical landscape reflected the new wealth.
Paintsville National Bank opened in a substantial Romanesque Revival building in 1902. Its founders included Mayo and several prominent local businessmen, and Mayo operated his coal interests from offices on the second floor.
Mayo Methodist Church rose between 1904 and 1909. Mayo’s enormous residence across Third Street took shape between 1905 and 1912, with Italian stoneworkers involved in construction. First Baptist Church, First Methodist Church, new commercial buildings, substantial residences, and eventually Paintsville High School joined them. The high school, completed in 1918, used the Classical Revival architectural vocabulary then popular across the United States.
The National Park Service later concluded that these buildings projected the image of a modern and prosperous Paintsville. Coal money was being converted into banks, churches, schools, houses, and commercial blocks that visibly distinguished the county seat from the more scattered settlements around it.
Coal Changes the Communities Around Paintsville
Paintsville itself was not transformed into a company coal camp. Instead, it became the commercial, financial, political, educational, and professional center serving a landscape increasingly dominated by coal.
That distinction mattered.
Beginning in the 1910s, Consolidation Coal Company developed Van Lear only a few miles from Paintsville. Mines, railroad connections, company stores, housing, utilities, and other facilities created an industrial settlement of a different kind. Workers could live in company towns while banks, lawyers, government offices, wholesalers, physicians, merchants, and other services remained concentrated in Paintsville.
Other communities that the railroad bypassed could not compete as easily. The National Park Service specifically noted that places such as Flat Gap and Red Bush gradually lost portions of their former commercial importance as rail oriented development strengthened Paintsville and communities along the new transportation corridor.
In this way the railroad reorganized Johnson County’s economic geography.
The courthouse had already made Paintsville the political center. Coal and railroads helped make it the commercial one.
Schools, Hospitals, Stores, and a Growing Downtown
By the 1920s, Paintsville’s Main Street had developed far beyond the small collection of mills and shops Henry Dixon had known a century earlier.
The 1910 and 1921 Sanborn fire insurance maps allow that transformation to be followed almost building by building. Streets were filling with banks, stores, churches, schools, residences, warehouses, and other structures. The maps document not simply individual businesses but increasing density, changing construction materials, and the gradual separation of commercial, residential, educational, and religious spaces within the town.
By the early 1920s Paintsville’s downtown offered a much broader range of services, including clothing stores, jewelers, hardware businesses, groceries, banks, and other specialized establishments. Hotels and medical facilities expanded as residents from surrounding mining and agricultural communities increasingly came into Paintsville for services they could not obtain at home.
Education remained closely tied to the Mayo legacy.
Sandy Valley Seminary and the institution later known as John C. C. Mayo College formed an important part of Paintsville’s educational landscape. The old Mayo estate itself eventually became connected with education, first through the seminary and college and later through Our Lady of the Mountains School. The physical property therefore survived changes in institutional ownership while continuing to serve an educational purpose.
Another branch of that tradition appeared in vocational education. A 1941 Kentucky Department of Education publication devoted to Mayo State Vocational School documented Paintsville’s place in the state’s effort to provide technical and workforce training to eastern Kentucky students.
Paintsville During the Great Depression
The Great Depression weakened the coal economy, but it also produced another visible period of construction in Paintsville.
Federal programs became major builders.
The Paintsville Post Office, begun in 1931, represented the first wave of Depression era public architecture. The Works Progress Administration then constructed or assisted with schools, roads, recreational facilities, and public buildings throughout Johnson County during the second half of the decade.
Paintsville received several enduring projects.
The WPA constructed the Paintsville Country Clubhouse and the former Paintsville Public Library building. Paintsville City Hall, completed in 1939, also became part of the city’s New Deal architectural landscape. These were not temporary relief projects hidden from public view. They were substantial civic buildings that continued to define public space long after the Depression ended.
The Civilian Conservation Corps also maintained a presence in the area. Kentucky Historical Society holdings preserve a 1936 issue of Arrowhead, the camp newspaper of Company 1518 at Paintsville’s Camp P-73. Such newsletters preserve a different perspective from government statistics, documenting the everyday institutional world created by New Deal programs for young men living and working in the mountains. Kentucky History
Paintsville in the Middle of the Twentieth Century
Coal remained important after the Depression and the Second World War, but Paintsville’s identity had become broader than mining alone.
A revealing document appeared in April 1953 when the Paintsville-Johnson County Development Association and the Kentucky Agricultural and Industrial Development Board prepared an Economic and Industrial Survey of Paintsville, Kentucky. The report examined population, labor, manufacturing, transportation, utilities, taxation, schools, health facilities, housing, communications, natural resources, markets, recreation, and possible industrial development.
The survey shows how local leaders were thinking about Paintsville in the postwar period. They were no longer describing a frontier trading station or even simply a coal boom town. They were evaluating the community as a modern economic center whose future depended upon roads, utilities, labor, education, health care, housing, and the ability to attract new investment.
That was a logical evolution.
For generations, residents of surrounding Johnson County communities had already traveled to Paintsville for courthouse business, banking, shopping, schooling, and professional services. Twentieth-century roads and automobiles strengthened those connections even as they reduced the importance of the river and railroad systems that had shaped earlier growth.
Paintsville increasingly functioned as a service center for a much larger mountain population than its city limits alone suggested.
Preserving the City the Coal Era Built
By the late twentieth century, enough of old Paintsville survived to attract systematic historic preservation efforts.
During 1983 and 1984, the Johnson County Historic Sites Survey Committee worked with the Kentucky Heritage Council to examine historic buildings throughout the county. Researchers drove nearly every public road, conducted deed research, interviewed residents, and evaluated more than ninety-five percent of the buildings appearing on contemporary United States Geological Survey maps. They ultimately inventoried 131 buildings, including 41 in Paintsville.
The resulting National Register documentation preserved a remarkable architectural cross-section of the city.
The list included the Mayo Methodist Church, First Methodist Church, First Baptist Church, Paintsville High School, Paintsville City Hall, the old public library, the Paintsville Country Club, Foster Hardware, the H. B. Rice Building, the First National Bank Building, the Patterson House, the Judge Jim Turner House, the Thomas Mayo House, and other properties associated with the town’s commercial, educational, religious, and residential development.
Together they form something close to an architectural timeline.
The older commercial buildings recall the nineteenth-century courthouse town. The Mayo era churches, banks, houses, and schools represent the arrival of coal capital and the railroad. The WPA buildings record the federal response to the Depression. Later commercial development reflects Paintsville’s continuing role as a regional center.
A Town Built at the Meeting of Roads, Rivers, and Eras
Paintsville’s history is ultimately a story about connections.
The community emerged where Paint Creek met the Levisa Fork. Traders established themselves there because geography drew people toward the river. Henry Dixon’s mills and town lots turned that stopping place into a recognizable settlement. The creation of Johnson County brought the courthouse and made Paintsville a center of government. Riverboats connected its merchants with outside markets. The Civil War turned the town into military headquarters and an occupied community. Coal and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad then transformed its economy, while John C. C. Mayo and his associates reshaped the skyline with banks, churches, schools, businesses, and substantial homes.
The Depression brought a different kind of investment through federal public works, and the twentieth-century road system gradually replaced the river and railroad as the principal means by which people reached the city.
Yet the pattern remained remarkably consistent.
For more than two centuries, people from the surrounding mountains have come to Paintsville because something important was concentrated there. At different moments that might have been a trading station, a mill, a courthouse, a river landing, a railroad office, a bank, a school, a hospital, a store, or a government office.
That continuing role may be the most important thread connecting Paint Lick Station with modern Paintsville. The technologies changed and the industries changed, but the geography did not. At the mouth of Paint Creek, surrounded by the ridges of Johnson County, Paintsville remained a gathering place for the Big Sandy Valley.
Sources & Further Reading
Walker, Thomas. Journal of an Exploration in the Spring of the Year 1750. 1750. Virginia Center for Digital History, University of Virginia. https://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/saxon/servlet/SaxonServlet?level=text&source=%2Fxml_docs%2Flewisandclark%2Fwalkerjournal.xml&style=%2Fxml_docs%2Flewisandclark%2Fdisplay_page.xsl
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. “Kentucky County Formation Chart.” Commonwealth of Kentucky. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://kdla.ky.gov/Archives-and-Reference/Pages/Kentucky-County-Formation-Chart.aspx
Johnson County Clerk. “Records.” Johnson County, Kentucky. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://johnson.countyclerk.us/records/
Johnson County Public Library. “Local History and Genealogy.” Patricia Patton Kentucky Room. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://johnsoncountypubliclibrary.org/using-your-library/
The Paintsville Herald. Paintsville, KY. Digital Archives of Johnson County Kentucky. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://johnson.advantage-preservation.com/
The Paintsville Herald. “Paintsville Herald Archive, 1915–1927.” Camden-Carroll Library, Morehead State University. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/paintsville_herald/
Big Sandy News. Digital Archives of Johnson County Kentucky. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://johnson.advantage-preservation.com/
Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Paintsville, Johnson County, Kentucky. July 1910. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn03226_001/
Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Paintsville, Johnson County, Kentucky. January 1921. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3954pm.g032261921/?st=gallery
U.S. Geological Survey. Paintsville Quadrangle, Kentucky. 1915. USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/topoview
U.S. Geological Survey. “topoView: USGS Historical Topographic Maps.” Accessed October 3, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/topoview
National Archives and Records Administration. “Census Records.” Accessed October 3, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/online-resources
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series 1, vol. 7. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1882. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/The_war_of_the_rebellion-_a_compilation_of_the_official_records_of_the_Union_and_Confederate_armies_%28IA_cu31924079609545%29.pdf
Garfield, James A. “James A. Garfield to J. B. Fry, January 8, 1862.” January 8, 1862. Letter Library. https://letterlibrary.com/letters/j-a-garfield-to-j-b-fry-january-8-1862/
Garfield, James A. “To the Citizens of the Sandy Valley.” Paintsville, KY, January 16, 1862. Letter Library. https://letterlibrary.com/letters/james-a-garfield-to-citizens-of-the-sandy-valley-january-16-1862/
Garfield, James A. Letter from Camp Buell, Paintsville, Kentucky, January 30, 1862. The War of the Rebellion, Series 1, vol. 7. Portal to Texas History, University of North Texas Libraries. https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth154610/m1/40/
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “John Newton Carnahan Civil War Letters.” Virginia Tech. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/objects?field%5B%5D=keyword&filter_fields%5B%5D=published_agents&filter_fields%5B%5D=subjects&filter_values%5B%5D=Carnahan%2C+John+Newton%2C+1824-1862&filter_values%5B%5D=Civil+War&limit=digital_object&op%5B%5D=OR&q%5B%5D=%2A&sort=year_sort+desc
National Park Service. Multiple Resources of Johnson County, Kentucky. National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/64000234_text
National Park Service. John C. C. Mayo Mansion and Office. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. https://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/74000887.pdf
National Park Service. Francis M. Stafford House. National Register of Historic Places documentation. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/75000785_text
National Park Service. “Paintsville City Hall.” National Register of Historic Places. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/88003158
National Park Service. First National Bank Building. Kentucky Historic Resources Inventory, Paintsville, Kentucky. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/7702faea-0c18-4bdc-be4e-72ccc284def4
National Park Service. First Methodist Church. Kentucky Historic Resources Inventory, Paintsville, Kentucky. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/3365421c-3799-4cdb-991f-b45aa79e8b08
National Park Service. First Baptist Church. Kentucky Historic Resources Inventory, Paintsville, Kentucky. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/c92c545b-0bff-4c7b-ba3f-31ebb11b2c9b
National Park Service. “Paintsville Country Club.” National Register of Historic Places. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/88003168
National Park Service. “Webb House.” National Register of Historic Places. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/88003160
National Park Service. “Foster Hardware.” National Register of Historic Places. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/88003156
National Park Service. “H. B. Rice Insurance Building.” National Register of Historic Places. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/88003157
National Park Service. “Patterson House.” National Register of Historic Places. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/88003167
National Park Service. “Judge Jim Turner House.” National Register of Historic Places. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/88003153
Kentucky Department of Education. Mayo State Vocational School, Paintsville, Kentucky. Frankfort: Kentucky Department of Education, 1941. Kentucky Historical Society Digital Collections. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/collection/RB/id/3312/
Paintsville-Johnson County Development Association and Kentucky Agricultural and Industrial Development Board. Economic and Industrial Survey of Paintsville, Kentucky. April 1953. Western Kentucky University, Kentucky Library Research Collections. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/johnson_cty/16/
Kentucky Historical Society. “Paintsville.” Kentucky Historical Marker Program. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://history.ky.gov/markers/paintsville
Kentucky Historical Society. “The Walker Expedition.” Kentucky Historical Marker Program. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://history.ky.gov/markers/the-walker-expedition
Kentucky Historical Society. “War on the Big Sandy.” Kentucky Historical Marker Program. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://history.ky.gov/markers/war-on-the-big-sandy
Kentucky Historical Society. “Jennie’s Creek.” Kentucky Historical Marker Program. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://history.ky.gov/markers/jennies-creek
Kentucky Historical Society. “Mission Accomplished.” Kentucky Historical Marker Program. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://history.ky.gov/markers/mission-accomplished
Kentucky Historical Society. “John C. C. Mayo’s Office.” Ronald Morgan Kentucky Postcard Collection. Kentucky Historical Society Digital Collections. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/collection/Morgan/id/5473/
Kentucky Historical Society. “Our Lady of the Mountains/Mayo Mansion.” Ronald Morgan Kentucky Postcard Collection. Kentucky Historical Society Digital Collections. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/collection/Morgan/id/5483/
Kentucky Historical Society. Arrowhead. Company 1518, Civilian Conservation Corps Camp P-73, Paintsville, Kentucky, 1936. Kentucky Historical Society Digital Collections. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/collection/LIB/id/2156/
Johnson County Public Library. “The Paintsville Historic Walking Tour.” Paintsville, Kentucky. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://johnsoncountypubliclibrary.org/resource/the-paintsville-historic-walking-tour/
Castle, Tommy. “Johnson County – Paintsville.” County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University, 1974. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/229/
Wells, J. K. A Short History of Paintsville and Johnson County. Paintsville, KY: Paintsville Herald, 1962. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4329279W/A_short_history_of_Paintsville_and_Johnson_County
Ely, William. The Big Sandy Valley: A History of the People and Country from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time. Catlettsburg, KY: Central Methodist, 1887. https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Big_Sandy_Valley.html?id=bVEVAAAAYAAJ
Connelley, William Elsey. The Founding of Harman’s Station, with an Account of the Indian Captivity of Mrs. Jennie Wiley and the Exploration and Settlement of the Big Sandy Valley in the Virginias and Kentucky. New York: The Torch Press, 1910. https://www.kykinfolk.org/floyd/county/files/book-the-founding-of-harmans-station-settlement-big-sandy-valley-1910.pdf
Crowe-Carraco, Carol. The Big Sandy Valley. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1979. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813101789/the-big-sandy-valley/
Scalf, Henry P. Kentucky’s Last Frontier. Pikeville, KY: Pikeville College Press, 1966. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/64000234_text
Johnson County Government. “Historical Sites.” Johnson County, Kentucky. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://www.johnsoncoky.com/residents/activities/historical-sites
Johnson County Historical and Genealogical Society. Highland Echo. Paintsville, KY, 1983–present. FamilySearch Catalog. https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog/485371
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. “Research Guides.” Commonwealth of Kentucky. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://kdla.ky.gov/Archives-and-Reference/Pages/Research-Guides.aspx
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. “Local and County Records.” Commonwealth of Kentucky. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://kdla.ky.gov/Archives-and-Reference/Documents/Handout-LocalCountyRecords.pdf
Author Note: Paintsville’s history shows how a small Appalachian river settlement became a regional center through county government, war, transportation, coal, education, and commerce. I hope this article encourages readers to explore the maps, newspapers, buildings, and archival records that still preserve the story of Johnson County’s county seat.