Appalachian Community Histories – Pulaski Station, Pulaski County: Mills, Stagecoaches, Railroads, and Rural Kentucky Life
Along the Cincinnati Southern Railway north of Somerset, between Eubank and Science Hill, lies a community whose history reaches back to the earliest decades of Kentucky’s settlement. Known today as Pulaski, it was once Pulaski Station, a railroad and postal community whose development reflected the changing transportation networks of nineteenth-century Kentucky. Long before trains passed through the area, its postal history began with a mill near Dumpling Cave and a rural settlement connected to the farms and waterways of northern Pulaski County.
Pulaski’s history is not the story of a large town that disappeared, but of a succession of small settlements and transportation landmarks whose names became connected through the relocation of a post office. Adams’ Mills, Higgins Station, and Pulaski Station each represent a different stage in that history, beginning with water-powered milling, continuing through the age of stagecoaches, and eventually becoming part of the expanding railroad network that connected southern Kentucky to Cincinnati and Chattanooga.
Adams’ Mills and the Settlement Near Dumpling Cave
Pulaski’s postal history began on April 18, 1828, when Alexander Adams established the Adams’ Mills post office. According to Kentucky place-name historian Robert M. Rennick, Adams, who lived from 1799 to 1849, operated a mill originally situated in Dumpling Cave at the head of Dumpling Hollow, west of Cave Hill and approximately one mile east of Fishing Creek. The location illustrates the importance of the county’s natural waterways and limestone landscape to its earliest agricultural development.
Mills were essential institutions in early rural Kentucky because they allowed farmers to process their grain without traveling considerable distances over difficult roads. A mill could become a gathering place where residents exchanged news, conducted business, and developed relationships with neighboring farming families. The establishment of a post office at Adams’ Mills made it part of a wider communication network at a time when much of the surrounding region remained dependent on horseback travel and wagon roads.
Sometime before 1838, Adams moved his mill from the cave to Fishing Creek. Rennick suggests that the post office probably followed, although the precise date of its relocation has not been established. By June 1876, the Adams Mills post office was serving the Buncombe locality, approximately two miles east of Fishing Creek and five miles north of Science Hill. These movements show how the location of an early post office could change as businesses and settlement patterns developed, even while its original name remained in use.
The surviving evidence also makes an important geographical distinction. The original Adams’ Mills and the later railroad community of Pulaski did not occupy precisely the same location. Their historical connection was established through the post office, which carried the name and institutional history of the earlier settlement to its eventual location beside the railroad.
Higgins Station and the Arrival of the Railroad
Before Pulaski Station received its new name, another transportation landmark existed near the future railroad site. Higgins Station, associated with Aaron Higgins, was an old stagecoach stop along the road that eventually became U.S. Route 27 and is now Kentucky Route 1247. It provided a convenient location for travelers moving through northern Pulaski County before railroad transportation became established.
The construction of the Cincinnati Southern Railway fundamentally changed transportation through this part of Kentucky. Built to connect Cincinnati with Chattanooga, the railroad reached Somerset in July 1877, opening a route that promised to reduce the time required to transport passengers, agricultural goods, and commercial shipments. Its completion through the region helped establish new economic relationships between the county’s rural communities and distant markets.
In 1879, the Adams Mills post office was moved to the former Higgins Station area near the railroad tracks. With Mack Newell serving as postmaster, it was renamed Pulaski Station on April 4 of that year, taking its name from the county. The designation was shortened to Pulaski in 1880, although the older name continued to appear in newspaper accounts for decades afterward. Rennick located the office approximately eight and a half railroad miles north of Somerset.
The relocation marked a transition from a postal community associated with a rural mill to one organized around a major transportation corridor. Rather than representing an entirely new settlement without a past, Pulaski Station inherited the postal history of Adams’ Mills while establishing its own geographical identity beside the Cincinnati Southern.
A Small Railroad Station with a Wider Reach
The earliest commercial directories suggest that Pulaski remained a relatively small community during the first years of its railroad history. R. L. Polk & Company’s Kentucky State Gazetteer and Business Directory for 1881–1882 devoted only a brief entry to Pulaski, identifying it as a small post office in the county of the same name. The limited description provides little evidence of a substantial commercial district, but entries for surrounding communities reveal that the station had an economic importance extending beyond its immediate population.
Dabney, also known as Doolin’s Crossroads, was located approximately eight miles north of Somerset. The same directory identified Pulaski Station, six miles away, as Dabney’s nearest railroad shipping point. Dabney’s listed residents included blacksmiths, teachers, a shoemaker, a cooper, and mill operators, demonstrating the range of occupations represented in nearby agricultural communities whose access to railroad transportation depended on stations such as Pulaski.
The station’s commercial influence reached beyond Pulaski County itself. Mintonville, a small Casey County village situated approximately sixteen miles south of Liberty, also identified Pulaski as its most accessible shipping point. Its agricultural shipments included dried fruit and produce, illustrating how the Cincinnati Southern connected inland settlements with markets that previously required longer journeys by wagon.
These contemporary directory entries offer a clearer picture of Pulaski’s function than its small size alone would suggest. A railroad station did not need to develop into a large town to serve an important regional purpose. For farming communities scattered across northern Pulaski and southern Casey counties, access to the railway meant another way to transport produce, receive merchandise, and connect with commercial activity beyond their immediate surroundings.
Farming, Milling, and the Pike Family Tragedy
The relationship between Pulaski Station and the surrounding agricultural economy remained important into the early twentieth century. One of the most detailed surviving newspaper accounts associated with the community appeared in the Lexington Herald on December 19, 1909, following the death of seventeen-year-old Andrew Joplin Pike, the son of C. C. Pike of Pulaski Station. Although the article reported a tragic accident, its description of the family’s activities provides valuable evidence of the occupations and transportation arrangements of local residents.
According to the newspaper, Pike and his father and brothers had traveled to Somerset to have machinery repaired at Hunt’s Machine Shop. The family was engaged in farming, threshing, and milling, occupations closely connected to the agricultural economy of northern Pulaski County. While the father remained in Somerset to examine some property with a friend, the sons began the approximately nine-mile journey home by wagon.
The December weather made the journey difficult, and young Andrew attempted to board a moving northbound freight train rather than continue traveling in the open wagon. He lost his footing, fell beneath the wheels, and was killed. The newspaper reported that he was engaged to be married within approximately two weeks and that his burial was planned for Pulaski Station the following day.
The accident illustrates both the opportunities and the dangers associated with railroad transportation during this period. More importantly for the history of Pulaski, the account offers a rare glimpse into the working life of one of its farming families. Their visit to a Somerset machine shop demonstrates the continuing importance of the county seat to rural businesses, while the newspaper’s reference to Pulaski Station confirms that the older railroad name remained familiar nearly thirty years after the post office had officially become Pulaski.
Everyday Life in the Early Twentieth Century
Beyond the commercial directories and occasional reports of major events, community correspondence in local newspapers provides another way to reconstruct the lives of Pulaski’s residents. The Somerset Journal, particularly its early twentieth-century editions, carried reports from small settlements throughout the county, recording family visits, church meetings, weddings, illnesses, and other ordinary events that rarely appeared in formal histories.
An issue published on June 18, 1920, included several references to individuals living in Pulaski. In the Ansel correspondence, readers learned that Lena Quinton of Pulaski had visited her father over the weekend. Elsewhere in the same issue, the Pisgah news reported visits involving Dennis Cassada and his family of Pulaski, including time spent with relatives in the surrounding communities.
These brief notices demonstrate the personal relationships connecting Pulaski with Ansel, Pisgah, and other settlements across northern Pulaski County. Families traveled between communities to visit relatives and friends, while their activities became part of the local newspaper’s record. Such correspondence is especially valuable for smaller communities because it preserves names and relationships that might otherwise survive only in census schedules, marriage records, or cemetery inscriptions.
The references also demonstrate the limitations of reconstructing Pulaski’s history from surviving publications. Unlike Somerset or other larger communities, Pulaski did not receive extensive coverage as an independent commercial center. Its residents frequently appear within the news of neighboring settlements, making the broader county newspaper record essential to understanding its social history.
Pulaski on the Historical Maps
Historic maps help place the community within the surrounding landscape and show how the railroad remained central to its geographical identity. A 1911 Rand McNally map of Pulaski County identifies Pulaski along the railway between Eubank and Science Hill, while a later United States Geological Survey map provides a much more detailed picture of the area.
Early twentieth-century maps show Pulaski along the north-south railway corridor between Eubank and Science Hill.
The 1954 USGS Science Hill Quadrangle identifies Pulaski beside the railroad and places it within a landscape of roads, hills, streams, farms, churches, and schools. To the west, the map records Fishing Creek, Dumpling Cave, Dumpling Hollow, and Cave Hill, providing a geographical connection to the earlier Adams’ Mills settlement. Buncombe and other neighboring localities also appear, helping distinguish the locations associated with the community’s successive postal names.
USGS mapping from 1954 documents Pulaski and the surrounding Fishing Creek and Buncombe area.
By comparing these maps with earlier railroad and postal records, the geographical development of Pulaski becomes easier to understand. Its history extends across several locations rather than remaining confined to the place eventually identified on railroad maps. The movement of the post office from the vicinity of Dumpling Cave toward Fishing Creek and then to the railroad reflects the ways local institutions adapted as transportation routes and commercial needs changed.
The Later Years of Pulaski’s Post Office
The post office remained an enduring institution in Pulaski long after its nineteenth-century relocation. According to Rennick’s research, postal service at Pulaski was suspended on November 30, 1984, ending more than a century of service under the Pulaski and Pulaski Station names and a postal history extending back to Adams’ Mills in 1828.
That date provides an important milestone, but the suspension of postal service should not automatically be interpreted as the disappearance of the community itself. A post office, a railroad station, and the surrounding settlement are distinct institutions, and their individual histories do not necessarily end at the same time. The available evidence establishes the postal suspension date without documenting the precise circumstances of the community’s subsequent development.
A more complete account of Pulaski during the twentieth century can be reconstructed through federal census schedules, property deeds, railroad records, and the surviving editions of Somerset’s newspapers. The Pulaski County Public Library’s digital collections preserve extensive census material, court records, tax lists, and newspaper archives that can help identify residents, trace land ownership, and document changes in the surrounding agricultural landscape.
Remembering Pulaski Station
Pulaski Station represents a history shared by many small communities across Appalachian Kentucky. Its early development was associated with a mill and a post office, its later identity emerged beside a railroad, and its surviving historical record is scattered across directories, newspaper correspondence, government documents, and maps. Each source preserves a different part of a community whose history cannot be measured solely by its population or the size of its commercial district.
The nineteenth-century directory entries show how Pulaski connected the surrounding agricultural countryside to wider markets. The story of the Pike family offers a glimpse into farming and milling in the railroad era, while the social correspondence published in 1920 preserves the family relationships that connected Pulaski to other northern Pulaski County settlements. Together, these accounts reveal a community shaped as much by the everyday lives of its residents as by the construction of the Cincinnati Southern Railway.
The name Adams’ Mills recalls the area’s early agricultural development, Higgins Station preserves an older transportation route, and Pulaski Station reflects the arrival of the railroad. Although these places were not all geographically identical, their histories became connected through the movement of a single post office. The survival of their names in historical records allows Pulaski’s development to be traced across more than a century and a half of changing transportation and settlement in south-central Kentucky.
Sources & Further Reading
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Pulaski County, Kentucky, Part 2.” La Posta: A Journal of American Postal History 38, no. 4 (2007). https://www.lapostapub.com/Backissues/LP38-4.pdf
R. L. Polk & Co. Kentucky State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1881–1882. Vol. 3, pt. 2. Detroit: R. L. Polk & Co., 1881. https://ldsgenealogy.com/KY/books/Kentucky-state-gazetteer-and-business-directory-1881-1882-Vol-III-pt-2-part-9.htm
R. L. Polk & Co. Kentucky State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1881–1882. Vol. 3, pt. 1. Detroit: R. L. Polk & Co., 1881. https://ldsgenealogy.com/KY/books/Kentucky-state-gazetteer-and-business-directory-1881-1882-Vol-III-pt-1-part-16.htm
R. L. Polk & Co. Kentucky State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1881–1882. Vol. 3, pt. 1. Detroit: R. L. Polk & Co., 1881. https://ldsgenealogy.com/KY/books/Kentucky-state-gazetteer-and-business-directory-1881-1882-Vol-III-pt-1-part-50.htm
Lexington Herald (Lexington, KY). December 19, 1909. Transcribed by Genealogy Trails. https://genealogytrails.com/ken/pulaski/obits.html
The Somerset Journal (Somerset, KY). May 14, 1920. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kykinfolk.org/pulaski/news/5_14_1920.htm
The Somerset Journal (Somerset, KY). June 18, 1920. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/6_18_1920.htm
Rand McNally & Company. Pulaski County, Kentucky. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1911. https://thegenealogyhound.com/maps/kentucky-maps/KY-Pulaski-County-Kentucky-1911-Rand-McNally-map-Somerset-Burnside-Science-Hill.html
United States Geological Survey. Science Hill Quadrangle, Kentucky. 1:24,000. Washington, DC: United States Geological Survey, 1954. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/HistoricalTopo/PDF/KY/24000/KY_Science%20Hill_709710_1954_24000_geo.pdf
Gunn, W. A. Map of the Surveys for the Cincinnati Southern Railway. Cincinnati: Strobridge & Co., 1873. https://alabamamaps.ua.edu/historicalmaps/railroads/Cincinnati%20Southern%20RR.htm
Rennick, Robert M. “Pulaski County: Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky, no. 388. Morehead State University, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/388/
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x1s3p
Rennick, Robert M. “Pulaski County: Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection, no. 123. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/123/
United States Geological Survey. Somerset, Kentucky. Topographic map, 1935. Robert M. Rennick Topographical Maps Collection, Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_maps_all/934/
Works Progress Administration and Robert M. Rennick. “Pulaski County: Post Offices & Place Names.” County Histories of Kentucky, no. 284. Morehead State University, 1939. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/284/
Works Progress Administration and Historical Records Survey. “Pulaski County.” County Histories of Kentucky, no. 56. Morehead State University, 1936. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/56/
Tibbals, Alma Owens, comp. A History of Pulaski County, Kentucky. Somerset, KY: Moore, 1952. https://books.google.com/books/about/A_History_of_Pulaski_County_Kentucky.html?id=hUh4D_2eUFMC
United States Post Office Department. Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950. Record Group 28, Microfilm Publication M1126. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
United States Post Office Department. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–1971. Record Group 28, Microfilm Publication M841. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
United States Postal Service. “Post Offices by County.” Postmaster Finder. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/post-offices-by-county.htm
Pulaski County Public Library. Digital Archives of the Pulaski County Public Library. Somerset, KY. https://pulaskilibrary.advantage-preservation.com/
Pulaski County Clerk. “Land Records.” Pulaski County, Kentucky. https://pulaski.kycountyclerk.us/land-records/
Kentucky Secretary of State. “Kentucky Land Office.” Frankfort, KY. https://www.sos.ky.gov/land/Pages/default.aspx
Kentucky Historical Society. Kentucky Newspapers on Microfilm: Counties Nelson–Robertson. Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/api/collection/LIB/id/1469/download
United States Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Maps: Preserving the Past.” National Geospatial Program. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past
Author Note: Pulaski Station’s history demonstrates how small Appalachian communities developed around the mills, roads, post offices, and railroads that connected rural families to the wider world. I hope this article encourages readers with family connections to Pulaski, Adams’ Mills, and the surrounding communities to preserve the photographs, records, and memories that can help us recover more of their history.